The man ascended the stairs, gesturing for them to follow. ‘What are you doing?’ Kit hissed through his teeth.

‘I told you, you’re too obviously a cop,’ Eddie whispered back. ‘But he’ll never suspect a posh Englishman.’

‘Wait – that was meant to be posh?’ said Kit in disbelief.

‘Why, what did you think it sounded like?’

‘Like you had something stuck up your nose!’

Eddie huffed as they reached the top of the stairs. ‘What do you know? Anyway, we’re here.’ The man opened a door. ‘Thank you,’ he said, reverting to his affected accent and selfconsciously trying not to sound too nasal.

Tinny jazz music from a CD player reached them as they entered the office. Racks of floor-to-ceiling shelving containing hundreds of box files ran along the rear wall. Another Malay man, even more hulking than the first, sat at a desk piled with documents. He looked up suspiciously.

The room’s far end was incongruously homely, a hefty antique desk of lacquered teak positioned almost like a barricade to cut its occupier off from the rest of the workspace. As well as a pair of telephones and several trays of papers, the desk was home to not one but two computers: a modern black and chrome laptop and, less impressively, an extremely outdated PC, its beige casing discoloured with nicotine. A faded picture of what Eddie assumed was Singapore some decades ago hung on the wall, an only slightly less old portrait of the Queen of England beside another door.

The man behind the desk was obese, a triple chin cupping a sun-reddened face. Despite the whirring desk fan fluttering the strands of his comb-over, he was glistening with sweat, in large part because he was wearing a three-piece tweed suit and a cravat. Eddie guessed him to be in his early sixties. His underling spoke in Malay, getting a fluent reply in the same language, then the fat man switched to English to address the new arrivals. ‘And what can I do for you gentlemen?’ He too had a plummy accent, but unlike Eddie’s attempt it sounded genuine. ‘I don’t often take meetings after normal business hours, but since the weather is so ghastly it would be rude to turn you away.’

‘I’m delighted to hear it,’ Eddie replied. ‘My name is Smythe, James St John Smythe. This is my associate, Mr Jindal.’

‘Stamford West. Please, sit.’

‘Thank you.’ Eddie took a place on a folding chair facing West, Kit beside him. The man who had shown them in, he noticed in his peripheral vision, remained standing with his arms folded, one hand slipped slightly inside his jacket to give him easy access to whatever weapon was concealed there. ‘Now, I know these are unusual circumstances, but I wish to engage your business.’

‘I see.’ West’s eyes were piggy, but also sharp and intelligent, already suspicious. ‘And how did you come to hear about me?’

‘We have a mutual friend, Kazim bin Shukri.’

‘Ah. And how is old Kazim?’

‘Having a spot of bother with the customs folk in South Africa, poor chap.’

‘Inconvenient,’ said West, the first syllable barely audible.

Eddie didn’t rise to the bait, pretending not to have noticed the vague accusation. ‘For me, definitely – he owed me ten thousand dollars at backgammon.’

‘Oh, another player?’ said West. ‘I do enjoy a match, although Kazim is too good for my liking. Where did you play?’

Bin Shukri’s regular gambling haunt was an item that had come up during Kit’s cover briefing . . . and its name had slipped Eddie’s mind. ‘That little place in Macao,’ he said, remembering one scrap of information and struggling to recall the rest. He could tell that Kit was desperate to mouth the name, but with West watching them both intently the prompt would be spotted instantly. ‘Some flower, what’s its name? The, ah, the Red Lotus, that’s the one. Nice place. Good martinis.’

He had no idea if the Red Lotus even had a bar, but West appeared satisfied – for the moment. ‘You had better luck than I did playing against him there, Mr Smythe. Now, what’s this business of yours?’

Again, a cover story had been worked out, but to Eddie’s mind it was too contrived for West to accept. Instead, he took something he had heard about from Nina as a starting point . . . with his own embellishments. ‘Well, old chap, I’m sure you’ve heard about the archaeological dig the Chinese have been doing at the tomb of the First Emperor, at Xi’an.’

‘Hard not to in these parts,’ said West, with a faint chuckle that set his chins rippling.

‘Quite so. They’ve been picking at the tomb for a while to excavate the outer chambers – they’re afraid to go too deep inside because they think it’s cursed, can you believe it? Anyway, they’ve brought out various artefacts, all of which are obviously extremely valuable. I have, shall we say, come into ownership of one of them.’

The corpulent man appeared surprised. ‘I wasn’t aware that the Chinese government was selling them.’

Eddie smiled. ‘Nor are they. One of the archaeologists had built up quite a gambling debt in Macao.’

‘Interesting. What is the artefact?’

‘A jade pagoda.’ He held one hand above the other, eighteen inches apart. ‘About yea high. Quite exquisite. Problem is, I need to get it out of China. They’re rather keen to recover it.’

‘I can imagine.’ West leaned back in his chair. ‘And you think I can somehow help you with this?’

‘You came highly recommended as someone who can transport goods . . . while avoiding official checks.’

‘I would point out that smuggling is illegal.’

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