They had been following the woman for two days. According to their information, the American would likely appear tonight. And it would be tonight that they struck. Otherwise, it might be another week before they had their chance, a week during which the investigation of the Kuan Yin hijacking would broaden and escalate into a manhunt, and the assumed identities of the ship's crew would become increasingly useless to Xiang and his men. They wanted to be long gone from Singapore by then.
The guest house they had been staying in was a shuttered, run-down building crammed between two other dilapidated structures in a twisty l. Arong not far from Fat B's. They had booked three rooms at a cheap rate, and though the accommodations in each were limited to a few sagging cots, a shaky corner table ringed by some equally lopsided chairs, and a washbasin with a dripping faucet, the out-of-the-way location and sordid atmosphere discouraged tourists and other meddling transients from seeking the place out, which was Xiang's only real requirement.
In fact, comfort was the last thing on his mind this evening.
His tattooed chest bare, he sat with both arms on the table, having wedged a small piece of cardboard under one of its legs to steady its irritating wobble. On its surface before him was a photograph of Max Blackburn. To his right was a candle he had set to burning in a flat metal ashtray. Beside the candle was a long, thin needle with a round ceramic handle. Across the room from Xiang, two of his men, Sang and Kamal, had pushed their cots to one side and given themselves space for the supple, tiger-style martial arts exercises of karena matjang. The shades were drawn and the electric fixtures in the room were off, and the candlelight projected their weaving shadows onto the walls and ceiling.
Thrown loosely across one of the cots were the clothes they would be wearing when they took Blackburn and the woman later on that night. Nondescript khakis, denims, and long-sleeved cotton shirts. The clothes of soft, weak people who lived safe and easy lives.
I suggest you get something to wear that will let you blend in, the peacock at the bar had said. His advice had been well taken, though he'd thought Xiang too witless to detect the mockery behind his neutral expression. Perhaps assuming size and stupidity went hand in hand. It was a mistake people often made in dealing with the Iban. And it only played to his advantage.
Now Xiang reached out with his large right hand, lifted the needle off the table, and held its carefully sharpened end into the flame. Let the others practice their kata. He had his own special method of preparation, of steeling himself for what lay ahead of them.
He waited silently, holding the needle out by its handle, watching it heat up. When it was red-hot he pulled it out of the flame, then raised his left hand in front of his face, his fingers straight up and close together. He stared at it for several moments, his eyes slitted with concentration, almost as if he were reading his own palm. The glowing needle was still in his opposite hand.
Now he brought the needle horizontally toward his left hand, aligning its tip with his little finger just below the upper joint. His lips pressed tightly together, he slid the needle into the finger, piercing the soft flesh behind its pad, pushing it through until the tip came out the other side with a little squirt of blood.
Perspiration filming the wide expanse of his brow, he drove the needle further into his hand. It penetrated the fourth finger below the knuckle, cauterizing his flesh as it lanced on through and then exited again, its point emerging to prick his middle finger.
Xiang continued pushing in the needle until it had skewered all of his fingers except his thumb, rotating it once or twice to avoid nicking bone. There was an almost trancelike absorption on his face.
Slowly, then, he curled the hand into a fist around the needle. A minute went by, two, three. His fist tightened. He felt the needle's heat and pressure blaze across the inner joints of his fingers. Blood greased his wrist and went splashing down onto the photograph of Max Blackburn. The more excruciating his pain became, the harder he squeezed down on the invasive metal, causing the skin of his fingers to stretch and bulge around its length. The dribble of blood quickened and intensified, slicking his forearm, covering the image on the photo. His fist tightened some more. The pain was a wave to be ridden and crested by sheer force of will, and he did not want it to stop.
He sat there with glazed and unblinking eyes, oblivious to the other two men as they continued their ritual exertions, their shadows slipping back and forth across the room, integrating and drawing apart in the liquid patterns of their millennium-old fighting techniques.
'It will be done,' he hissed under his breath. 'It will be done.'
His fist tightened, tightened, tightened.
A half hour later, Xiang pulled the dripping needle from his flesh.
He was ready.
The second time they'd been together — the first was that crazily exciting weekend in Selangor, when Max Blackburn swept into her life like a whirlwind, swept her into bed before she had a chance to think about what she was doing, or even ask herself whether anybody was at the wheel in her swoony little head — the subject of Marcus Caine's business ethics had come up in their conversation. Actually, Max had brought it up. Over dinner at a Thai restaurant on Scotts Road, she recalled.
They had finished their meal, and were on their second bottle of claret, and a half hour later would be grappling breathlessly in Max's suite at the Hyatt, the clothes they had shed leaving a scattered trail to the door. In between, though, they had drunk their wine and discussed her employer. Briefly, it was true. Very briefly, because they'd both been looking forward to more delightful activities than talking shop. But long enough to touch off a sequence of events that would eventually turn her world inside out.
The workday over, alone except for the cleaning woman out in the corridor, Kirsten Chu sat in the quiet of her office knowing that she was about to blow her career, and perhaps her entire life, to smithereens. Maybe sometime in the future, just so it would make clear and easy sense, she would convince herself that it was done out of conscience, moral indignation, and her refusal to become a passive accessory to acts that went far beyond the boundaries of international law. A woman of principle. Yes, that assessment by way of fuzzy hindsight had a nice ring, and would make her feel good about her decision in the reflective moments of her dotage. But right now, running an internal truth check, she could find only one overarching motive for what she was doing.
Of all the damn reasons in the world, it was out of love and longing for a man she barely knew anything about.
How bloody romantic.
Kirsten glanced at her wristwatch and saw that it was five-thirty, almost time to be off; Max was meeting her outside the Hyatt in half an hour. She popped the disk that would be the instrument of her professional demise out of her computer's CD-R drive, and for several moments afterward just sat there shaking her head, staring at the lethal circle of plastic, remembering that conversation at the restaurant as clearly as if it had occurred only yesterday.
Ah, Max, Max, Max. The question he'd posed to her was fairly indelicate, and probably would have been off- putting if it had come from anyone else. But that was the essential Blackburn, wasn't it? He had a way of saying things to her that other people couldn't, not without instantly and appropriately causing her defenses to harden. Indeed, she had felt vulnerable to him from the beginning.
He somehow turned tactlessness into a disarming quality, perhaps because he knew it worked for him, and took such confident pleasure in his knowing.
What he had asked, seemingly out of the blue, was whether she had any strong feelings about her employer's 'underhanded corporate tactics.' As if it were an obvious given that there was something wrong with the manner in which Marcus Caine did business. The sky is blue, the sea is wide, Marcus Caine is an unscrupulous crook. Elementary, my dear Kirsten.
At first she hadn't known what to say, had just looked at him over the rim of her wine glass, wondering if he really expected her to say anything. And he had just waited, letting her know that he did.
'I think,' she'd replied finally, still hoping to avoid the subject, 'your question is in violation of our declared truce.'
'Nope, I've checked the rules, and they're very clear that it's acceptable,' he said, that self-assured, damnably engaging look in his eyes. 'Feel free to answer without risk.'
She had not understood why his question made her so uncomfortable. Not then, and not for a while afterward. She had not yet been willing to admit, either to Max or herself, that he'd touched upon an already raw nerve. That the financial irregularities she had been noticing at Monolith — irregularities, ah, yes, she'd always
