The Italian Divide (24 page)

“Good. I’m glad to hear it. What do you base that on?”

“Observing his voice and facial expressions. I’ve become expert on that over here. In my opinion, it didn’t matter how you handled the questioning. He had no intention of telling you what you wanted to know.”

“Anybody we can go to in the Singapore government to bring him around?”

“I was just thinking that.”

“And?” Craig held his breath.

“I’ve developed a good relationship with the justice minister. He might be willing to help. I’ll set a meeting for the two of us tomorrow morning.”

“Perhaps you should take the lead this time. You know the minister. And you’ll no doubt be more tactful.”

She laughed. “That’s not saying much. But I’ll be happy to do that. Meantime, how about having dinner with my husband, Warren, and me this evening?”

“I’d like that.”

“Good. We’ll pick you up at your hotel at eight.”

She reached into her bag and took out a card. “It has all of my contact information, including my cell phone. Call if you need me.”

*     *     *

Dinner with Jennifer and Warren, a handsome man with thick gray hair and the appearance of a successful businessman in his well-cut dark suit, was comfortable and relaxed for Craig.

The food at The Blue Ginger, according to Warren, was one of the great culinary traditions of Singapore. Known as Peranakan cooking, it was an infusion of Chinese and Malaysian styles relying heavily on exotic spices. It was superb, and they drank scotch followed by Chateau Trotanoy, one of Craig’s favorites from Bordeaux. Much of the time, Craig asked Warren about how he became a painter and about what he was pursuing in his art.

“I tell Jennifer,” Warren said, “that thanks to her getting this ambassadorship, and my tagging along, I’m going through my Gauguin phase.”

“But not with the native girls,” she responded.

“The truth is, Craig, she’d be too busy to notice if I were. And, by the way, did you know that Gauguin was a banker, married to a minister’s daughter, and had four children before he began painting?”

“So why’d he do it?”

“The banking crash of 1883. I read about him and decided to follow in his footsteps. I was a banker until the crash of 2008. I had always dabbled at painting, but at that point, I dove in with both feet. I was tired of selling phony mortgage bonds. And happily, I didn’t need the income—ah, the advantages of marrying a wealthy woman. It’s the best move a man can ever make.” Jennifer picked up her fork and playfully rapped him on his knuckles.

As they were leaving the restaurant, she told Craig, “Our meeting tomorrow morning with the justice minister is at ten. Why don’t you come to the embassy at nine. We’ll go from there.”

They dropped Craig at his hotel at a few minutes before eleven. When he entered his room, he saw on the floor a white letter-sized envelope with the name George Moore typed on the front.

Craig ripped it open. Inside was a note neatly typed on white paper.

“Sorry I could not talk freely with you this afternoon. My office is not good for that. Could you meet me this evening at midnight at Au Jardin Les Amis Restaurant. I will give you the information you wanted.”

Craig read the note twice, then tore it into little pieces and flushed it down the toilet.

He faced a dilemma. Did the note come from Lin Yu who wanted to talk or was it a trap arranged by Yu or Zhou to have him attacked or even killed? Craig decided he couldn’t call Jennifer. He’d have to make up his own mind.

After thinking about it for full minute, he decided to go to the meeting point. Perhaps, he was being foolhardy; but if there was a chance of nailing Zhou, he had to take it. Besides, he had been out of the terrorism business so long that he was itching to get back into the action.

He dressed in slacks and a shirt and took a cab to the restaurant. It was a colonial style house in the middle of Singapore’s lush botanic gardens, reminding him a little of Le Pre Catelan in Paris in the heart of the Bois de Boulogne.

Craig checked his watch. Ten minutes to twelve. He sat at the bar and ordered an Armagnac.

Twenty minutes later, Yu hadn’t appeared. Craig was wondering if this was a wild goose chase when the maître d’ came over and handed him an unaddressed white envelope. Craig opened it and pulled out a typed note. “I’m outside in the back, next to the large fountain. Go through the rear door of the restaurant, walk along the path for twenty yards, and you’ll see me.”

Craig wondered if he was being set up, but he had come this far. He had no intention of turning back. He paid the bartender for the drink and headed toward the rear door.

The night was balmy with only a sliver of a moon. Stepping outside into the lush garden, he saw a fountain straight ahead with water shooting up into the air. A man was standing in front of it, but in the darkness he couldn’t tell if it was Yu. He headed in that direction.

Suddenly, Craig felt sick, very sick, nauseous. His eyes were blurred and he lost focus. The entire garden was spinning, around and around.

He heard voices, men speaking, “Sir, are you okay? Do you need help?”

It wasn’t Yu’s voice.

“No …” he mumbled. “No.”

He felt powerful arms clutching him, around his chest and pulling him backward.

Then everything went black.

*     *     *

Craig was regaining consciousness. Every part of his body hurt. He reached up to the side of his face and felt dried, caked blood. A foul smell filled his nostrils, the odor of feces and urine.

Slowly, he opened his eyes and looked around. He was in a dingy prison cell, seated on a dirt floor, propped up against a stone wall. Seven other men were in the small cell, all wearing the same stained prison blues as Craig. He was surprised to see they had left him wearing his black pointed leather shoes.

To alleviate the stiffness, Craig stood up. As he did, he heard a shout from across the cell. “The American’s awake.”

Craig looked in that direction. The shout had come from a giant of a man, brown skinned and weighing about three hundred pounds.

He was walking toward Craig with a metal object in his hand.

The other prisoners cleared a path letting the giant approach Craig. Then they made a circle behind the giant.

Craig noticed the giant was holding a switchblade knife. He pressed a button and it snapped open.

“Give me some money, American,” the giant called, while holding the knife in his upraised arm in a menacing grip.

“Sorry,” Craig said, sounding bold. “The guards took all my money. They didn’t leave me my credit cards. So even if you take Visa or American Express, I can’t give you those.”

A couple prisoners laughed. “Shut up,” the giant shouted to them. Then to Craig, “You think that’s funny. You mock me. You make jokes of me.”

Craig looked around for a stick of wood, anything he could use as a weapon, but he didn’t see a thing.

When the man was five yards away, Craig called out, “Listen, asshole. I wasn’t making trouble for you. So piss off.”

As he expected, his words enraged the giant. He kept coming. One chance is all Craig would get. He had to use it.

The giant had the knife raised in his right hand. With his left, he reached out to grab Craig. Before he had a chance, Craig was off his feet, flying through the air toward the man with those black pointed shoes out in front aimed for the giants’ groin. They smashed into his balls.

The giant screamed in pain. The knife fell from his hand. They both tumbled to the ground. The giant was thrashing, grabbing for Craig. But blinded by pain, he couldn’t reach Craig who spun away, grabbed the knife and sprang to his feet.

With the knife in hand, he whirled around and looked at the circle of other prisoners. “Any of you others want what he just got? Then come on.”

He knew full well if they all came for him at the same time, he was dead. But he stared at them menacingly, showing no fear.

No one moved. The giant staggered to his feet, stumbled to a corner of the cell, and threw up. The others moved back, yielding one side of the cell to Craig.

About ten minutes later, two guards opened the cell door. Craig quickly closed up the knife and concealed it under his shirtsleeve. The guards motioned to Craig, who headed toward the door. As he crossed the threshold, he took out the knife and handed it to one of the guards. “I found this on the floor of the cell. Somebody must have lost it.”

Craig noticed the giant glaring at him. He glared back.

The guard led him to a small room, which held a table and two chairs. Jennifer was seated in one of them. The guards closed the door and left them alone.

Craig put a finger over his lips and searched the room for bugs or a tiny hidden camera or recorder. Nothing. No one way glass.

“Okay, let’s talk,” he said.

“You’re in a great deal of trouble and you look like hell.”

“That bad.”

She removed a compact from her bag and opened it to the mirror. He saw that his face was bruised. One eye was barely open. The blood was from a cut on the side of his face near his eye.

“Yeah. You’re right,” he said. “What did they tell you I did?”

“That you went to a brothel. You had been drinking heavily and paid to have sex with two women. You were naked in the bedroom. So were the women. You demanded anal sex, and when they refused, you became abusive and started hitting them. They screamed for the security guards. Two of them came. You began fighting with them. That’s when you were beaten. The police have sworn statements from everyone involved. The women. The two security guards. Even the madam. Fortunately, the police found the card I gave you with my contact info. So they called me and I came immediately.”

“What time is it now?”

“Almost ten thirty in the morning. I’ve been waiting here for them to bring you for the last half hour.”

“They waited in order to give some monster in the cell a chance to kill me.”

Her face was pale. She had deep furrows on her forehead. “This does not look good for you or for the United States.”

Craig was worried she believed what they had told her. “Now would you like to know what really happened?”

“Your version.”

“The truth.”

“I’m listening.”

He explained everything that occurred from the time he saw the note in his hotel room to his collapsing in the garden. “So they must have drugged my Armagnac,” he said. “I hope you believe me.”

“I’ve never heard of anything like this happening in Singapore. Crime rates are low, and …” she said hesitantly.

“But,” she continued. “I do believe you. I’ll go to bat for you and try to convince the Justice Minster.”

“You and I were supposed to meet with him half an hour ago.”

“I already called and postponed that until I met with you.”

Craig sighed. That meeting had been important. Yu and Zhou had totally outmaneuvered him. “Can you reset it for this afternoon?”

“I’ll call him. First, I’ll need him to get you out of here, which won’t be easy with sworn statements from so many witnesses. It would be better for me to do it in person.”

“In the meantime, what happens to me?”

“I’ll convince the head of the prison to lock you up in your own cell until I return.”

“You think you can?”

“He won’t want anything to happen if he knows I’m meeting with his boss about you.”

Jennifer proved to be correct. When she left, Craig was permitted to shower, was given clean clothes, and placed in a spotless, sanitary cell.

He didn’t have a watch or clock, but it seemed as if Jennifer returned somewhere between an hour and two hours later.

“Okay. Here’s the deal I cut,” she told Craig. “The next plane to the United States leaves in two hours on Singapore Air for Los Angeles. If you’re on that plane and out of the country, no charges will be filed.”

“What about our meeting with the justice minister about Yu?”

“He’ll have that meeting with me alone once you’re in the air. Call me from Los Angeles, and I’ll give you a report.”

“But—”

Craig was preparing to protest.

She cut him off. “This is the only way to avoid a huge embarrassment for President Worth and the United States.”

“I didn’t do anything wrong.”

“You and I both know that, but the justice minister showed me photos of you naked with two prostitutes,” she said grimly. “Unless you’re on that plane, he’s prepared to release the photos to the media. In these wonderful days of the Internet, they’ll go viral.”

“Shit!”

“Exactly my sentiments.”

Craig was confident her meeting about Yu with the justice minister wouldn’t produce anything useful. Yu and Zhou had made his trip to Singapore a dismal failure. He was no closer to nailing Zhou for Federico’s murder.

Los Angeles and Washington

C
raig got off the plane in Los Angeles. After clearing customs, he had an hour before the flight to Washington.

Long enough to call Jennifer in Singapore.

“What happened?” he asked anxiously.

“Disaster averted, but you won’t like the result.”

“What do you mean?”

“He told me the price for his commitment not to prosecute you for what he called, ‘this error of judgment’ on your part.”

“That’s bullshit,” Craig said angrily. “They set me up.”

“I explained all that again. You and I are the only ones who believe it.”

“Oh, c’mon. He’s being paid off by Yu.”

“Their town. Their rules. You know how that goes.”

“All too well. What’s the price?”

“The United States will drop its investigation of Yu in connection with the Milan transaction.”