The Malay shoved me away from the wall, still gripping my left wrist. The gun burrowed into the softness beneath my rib cage on that side. We went around the corner and along the side of the darkened godown, the Eurasian hanging back a couple of steps; they were a pair of professionals, all right.
On the street fronting the string of godowns, a thousand yards from the entrance to Wong Sot’s, the English Ford was parked in heavy shadow. The Malay pushed me into the rear seat and got in next to me; the pressure remained hard on my wrist, and the gun-a Mauser, I saw in the dome light-still nuzzled my side in mute warning. I could smell stale curry and sour wine on his breath. The Eurasian slid under the wheel in front, and a moment later we moved away rapidly into the night.
The ride lasted twenty minutes, all of them silent. I turned my head away from the Malay’s breath, but otherwise I held my body still. We went over to Orchard Road and along there toward the exclusive Tanglin sector of the city, and then turned onto a quiet residential street lined with palms and well-landscaped villas and colonials. Upper-class Singapore, where the Chettiar bankers and the Chinese towkays and the British and American investors and businessmen lived. Money and gentility and quiet luxury. And Van Rijk.
The Eurasian brought the small car smoothly to the curbing before one of the homes-a large villa with light visible behind drapery across a long front window. He stepped out to cover my exit. When he was clear of the car, the Malay released me for the first time and shoved me out, following fluidly to replace the gun muzzle under my ribs. We passed through an iron-framed gate and followed a path lined with Ixora plants and red jasmine and jungle ferns. Night birds sang softly in the surrounding growth, and purple bougainvillea grew lushly across the wide front veranda. I held my breath against the mawkish sweetness of the flowers’ scent as the Eurasian rapped three times on the front door, opened it. The Malay shoved me inside.
Van Rijk was waiting in a large bilek dudok just off the entrance foyer. It was furnished with a mahogany desk, mahogany-and-leather settee and chairs, a mahogany-and-leather bar. The walls were inlaid, alternate-grained panels of Philippine mahogany, lined with bookshelves on one side, expensive-looking Javanese wood carvings on a second, and jade statuettes and figurines on the remaining two. The rug was Thai-crafted and intricately patterned. Thievery and violence still paid well, and still bought the very best.
Van Rijk was standing beside the bar wearing a dove-gray suit and a pink ascot and holding a glass in his hand. But his eyes were glacial chips, and there was nothing gingerbread about him tonight. He was no different now from the two guns-for-hire standing behind me; shrewd and educated, which allowed him to assume the role of leader and the whims of wealth, but intrinsically there was no difference at all.
He said to the hirelings, “The Burong Chabak?”
“No, tuan,” the Malay answered. “He carried nothing.”
“You’re certain?”
“Yes, tuan.”
“And he was alone?”
“Yes, tuan.”
Van Rijk looked at me. “The figurine-where is it?”
“I don’t know where it is. If I did, do you think I would have gone to Wong Sot’s tonight without it? Would I leave Singapore without it?”
He couldn’t ignore the logic in that. He slapped his glass down on the bar and paced the Thai rug in front of it. Then, abruptly, he stopped and put his eyes on me again. “Suppose we discuss Marla King.”
“There’s nothing to discuss. She’s dead.”
“You did kill her, then. I thought so.”
“I didn’t kill her. A Swede named Dinessen killed her.”
“For the figurine?”
“For double-crossing him.”
“Then why did you kill Dinessen?”
“I had no choice. It was self-defense.”
“And in spite of all these deaths, you still maintain that you know nothing about the figurine.”
“That’s right.”
His head and upper body seemed to oscillate rigidly, as if he were undergoing a violent inner battle to maintain control of his emotions. He caught up a folded newspaper lying on the bar and came over to stand in front of me. “I think you’re lying,” he said. “You know something. You have to know something.”
“I don’t know-”
He slapped me with the paper. His face was flushed, his teeth bared; the predatory instincts had won the internal struggle. “You’ll talk,” he said. “You’ll talk.” He slapped me again, and again. “You’ll talk.”
I made a convulsive lunge at him. He scuttled backward, dropping the paper, and shouted, “Khee!” in a shrill voice. One of the hirelings hit me on the back of the neck with his forearm, and I went down onto my hands and knees with my vision momentarily out of focus. Van Rijk was spitting gutter Dutch at me from in front of the bar, like a man unhinged. The Burong Chabak was more than a profit with him; he was obsessed with it.
I shook my head and regained my vision, and I was staring at the newspaper lying just in front of me on the rug. It had fallen open to the front page, and my picture looked back at me from across three columns-a grim thing taken shortly after the crash on Penang and the death of Pete Falco. There was a headline, too, that said: EX-PILOT SOUGHT IN SLAYINGS. I started to look away, to get back onto my feet, and my eyes went over the lead paragraph of the news story below the headline.
Coldness fled along the saddle of my back, and I didn’t immediately believe what I saw. I reached out and grabbed up the paper and read the story through, my fingers tightening reflexively at the edges of the newsprint, crumpling it, tearing it. I believed it then. Facts in black-and-white. Irrefutable facts. And irrefutable implications. Jarring my mind. Connections, progressions, answers. Things that had been said, and things that had not been said, and things I had taken for granted that should not have been taken for granted at all. Complexity and treachery far exceeding my original conception.
Jesus, I had been stupid-monumentally stupid all along! The key was right there on the front page of the Singapore Straits Times, and right there, too, was my chance to clear myself with Tiong-my only chance, a chance the existence of which I hadn’t even known. All I would have had to have done was to buy an edition, but I never read the papers and the thought hadn’t even occurred to me; I had presumed to know, without consideration, what would be said. But I hadn’t known at all, I had had no idea. I was a goddam babe in swaddling clothes after two years, a sucker, a sap, a fool, and stupid, stupid, stupid..
Van Rijk had stopped shouting, and when I looked up at him he was sucking breath through ovaled lips, getting himself under control again. I left the paper on the floor and got slowly to my feet. The Malay and the Eurasian were standing one on either side of me, poised, watching me with one eye and Van Rijk with the other, waiting for instructions. I had it all together in my mind now, and I was no longer berating myself. There was still a chance for me, if I could get away from the three of them; but if I had succeeded in escaping Singapore without seeing a copy of that paper, the one chance to clear myself would have been lost completely. Blundering into Van Rijk’s trap might not have been such a bitter twist of fate after all- if I could get free. But this wasn’t the place to try it; there was a better place, a much better place.
“One last chance, Mr. Connell,” Van Rijk said thinly. “You know something and you will either tell me of your own volition, or I will allow Khee and Tulloh to extract the information. Both are expert in the art of interrogation.”