Vivian could hear their strident voices from her suite in the Ritz Zion. By an ornate doorway a smooth-faced, gangly man named Song paid a handsome tip to a chambermaid and closed the door behind him. He removed his hat and hung it over a brass hook along the hallway. His hair was fine and white. He smiled at Vivian—his prize for the night.
No one knew how Song made his fortune, and only at the mercantile ball that evening did Vivian learn that he owned 12 plantations in various parts of Malaya and two on this island. They were registered under different names, and an inquiry into them yielded 14 different sets of IDs of different ages. A true rover—and a very clever and elusive one. He’d toggle from one ID to the next; now a clerk and now a plantation owner, and the tactic would last him over a century. Vivian’s records put him at a 110.
He loved life—rather, a life the Serum had conferred upon him, miraculously spared of induced ailments. Vivian had observed how he mingled with tremendous ease at the ball, striking conversations quickly and drawing laughter from whomever he met. He had flirted with at least eight women before he chose her. And Vivian loved such clients because their conceit gave her no remorse. She’d help CODEX kill them all.
They kissed. Vivian undid the collar of her gown—a luxuriant piece of red silk and black lace. Song crossed his fingers behind her slender waist and pulled her close. He looked fondly at her, kissed her again and started slipping his hand past the slit of her skirt.
Vivian seized his wrist, but she was too late.
Song, his face glowing with a youthful, boyish charm, removed his hand, and with it a narrow, six-inch blade stocked in an ivory hilt. Vivian tried to smile through the tension in her face. “So I see,” she said softly. “You detect Serum signatures. You read minds.”
“I read intentions.” Song brushed a finger across the side of Vivian’s face. “More specifically, dangerous ones. It’s my gift. So who do you work for, Vivian?”
“No one,” she teased. “I get assistance from time to time.”
“Ah,” Song lifted an eyebrow. “And who bestows such assistance?”
Vivian knew the perils of situations like this. Song could send the steel into her throat at any moment and the bloodied mess would’ve been nothing more than self-defence. Besides, his immense wealth could buy justice. She would have to act fast, and carefully. His death had to be all-natural. No wounds, no signs of struggle.
She detected the twitch in Song’s hand that held the blade.
“Who?” Song asked again, his smile turning poisonous.
“A Coterie,” Vivian said, gracing him with one of her own, “of ageless assassins.”
In the wake of her reply Song sprung at her, hurtling the cruel shard of steel towards the side of her neck. Yet his reflexes were but those of the common man. The blade spun off in a whirr of fluid movements, and the next moment Song, his wrist wrung to a distressing angle, was gasping at the spark of pain that weakened his limbs. In snaring the hand Vivian had wisely kept the bones unbroken.
Song’s attempt to swing his free arm at her only brought about a deeper twist and greater pain. He squealed like a pig. With one hand, Vivian flipped open an antiquated leather briefcase. A magnifying screen folded into place, and a keypad, fashioned of brass and ebony, rose and locked itself into place.
“What are you doing?” Song croaked, the pain now wrenching tears from his eyes.
“My job,” Vivian said, her eyes travelling impassively across the screen. “Should’ve been more selective over who you chose to kiss.”
A cybernetic infusion now flowed in the veins of the wretched man, having been transfused from Vivian’s deadly kiss. It mingled with his Serum, embedded itself into his cells. By the tap of a key Vivian had them programmed, and the infusion hitched a ride on the bloodstream and began its dutiful journey towards his racing heart. Song felt the faint prod of pain in the ensuing seconds. His chest numbed as the infarction steadily took hold, and the reality of it drove him to a state of hysteria. As the growing pain compelled him to kneel, Vivian released her grip on him. He folded, clutching his chest and falling to his side. Inside him the cybernetic infusion sealed the arteries until the mounting pressure ruptured them all. Blood decanted from his mouth in ugly splutters, drowning his cries. On it went like a broken fountain, and Vivian watched.
But her triumph wasn’t to last. A signal buzzed. She reached for her ear and tapped on the accessory—a delicate armature of spring steel over her auricle, from which dangled a string of three small pearls.
A male voice cackled. “Constables are entering the lobby right now.”
Vivian breathed a curse. She should’ve been more careful. Song’s ruse, though fruitless, wasn’t intended to work on its own. Beside the balcony Song’s body twitched through its last flicker of life. Before a gilded Victorian mirror she threw on a dark flowing shawl and affixed an ornate fascinator over her head.
Then she retrieved the blade, her briefcase and left the suite.
Four constables, dressed in the khaki uniforms of the colonial police force, clattered past her on their way up the grand curving staircase; the Sikhs in their striped turbans and the Malays in their songkoks. They had batons slung on their black leather belts.
Vivian exited the hotel and strode down the street, veering neither to the left nor right. She took to the alleys and immediately the air turned foul with the stench of rotting food. Her Cuban-heels went clapping loudly across the rutted, broken tarmac, occasionally avoiding the sprawled legs of destitute opium-addicts.
At the Zion the constables, having made the tragic discovery, pattered down the stairs in haste. They conferred with the front desk and learned about the woman who had shared the room with Song—the one in a shawl and fascinator. A bellboy pointed them to the street and out they went.
The alley took Vivian to the northern end of The Great World. An avenue of novelty stalls led south, flanking a central aisle teeming with patrons. In one corner an Indian yogi began swallowing the knives he had been juggling and a Malay fire-eater spat bursts of flames at his audience. Farther on, a shrivelled guru in a white turban charmed a glistening black spitting cobra. At a shooting gallery one could hear the snap of air rifles and the crash of stricken light bulbs.
She plowed through bands of steam that drifted from one side of the street to the other, her cadence deliberate and urgent. She passed rows of stalls blazing with huge cooking fires. Ducks and chickens, hideously waxed and flattened, hung from rafters.
The clatter of boots neared. She ventured a sharp right turn towards the Atlantic cinema. There the stench of the river was heavy against the musk of wooden crates and burlap. She shouldered her way past the movie-going crowds and burrowed through a dodgy little entrance set into a wall plastered in an eclectic patchwork of outdated advertisements and movie posters. A row of date palms lined the building’s front, and above a grand oak-framed entrance The Flamingo flashed in gaudy, pink neon script.
Inside, the roof was high and ribbed in ornate arches of teak. Cast-iron electric lamps hung from them. An octagonal dancehall sat in the centre, lively with dancers. A band in white jackets played on stage.
A bartender at a makeshift cocktail bar watched Vivian navigate the sea of tables, politely rejecting dance offers by regulars and tipsy sailors who knew her to be one of the club’s most sought-after taxi-dancers. At the bar she slipped the briefcase through the table’s skirting, took off her shawl and fascinator and luxuriantly tossed free her pin curls. Amid the glorious notes of Paul Whiteman’s Flamin’ Mamie, Vivian whispered something into the bartender’s ear and waltzed over to the dance floor.