As the helicopter lifted off from the yacht, Nick and Alistair began laughing uncontrollably at the figure of Bernard, his baggy swimming trunks whipping around his pale damp thighs, staring up at them in bewilderment.
“I don’t think it even occurred to him that this isn’t a medical helicopter but a chartered one.” Mehmet chuckled.
“Where are we going?” Colin asked excitedly, throwing off the purple-and-gold paisley blanket.
“Mehmet and I have chartered a Cessna Citation X. It’s all fueled up and waiting for us in Hong Kong. From there, it’s a surprise,” Nick said.
“The Citation X. Isn’t that the plane that flies at six hundred miles per hour?” Alistair asked.
“It’s even faster when we’re just five people with no luggage.” Nick grinned.
A mere six hours later, Nick, Colin, Alistair, Mehmet, and Lionel found themselves sitting on canvas chairs in the middle of the Australian desert, taking in the spectacular view of the glowing rock.
“I’ve always wanted to come to Ayers Rock. Or Uluru, or whatever they call it now,” Colin said.
“It’s so quiet,” Mehmet said softly. “This is a very spiritual place, isn’t it? I can really feel its energy, even from this distance.”
“It’s considered to be the most sacred site for the Aboriginal tribes,” Nick answered. “My father brought me here years ago. Back in those days, we were still allowed to climb the rock. They stopped letting you do that a few years ago.”
“Guys, I can’t thank you enough. This was the perfect escape from a very misguided bachelor party. I’m sorry I put all of you through Bernard’s bullshit. This is really all I ever hoped for — to be someplace amazing with my best friends.”
A man in a white polo shirt and khaki shorts approached with a large tray from the luxury eco-resort nearby. “Well, Colin, Alistair — I thought that the only way to get you coffee snobs to stop bitching and moaning was to get you a decent flat white, one hundred percent made in Australia,” Nick said, as the waiter put the tray down on the reddish earth.
Alistair brought the cup to his nose and inhaled the rich aroma deeply. “Nick, if you weren’t my cousin, I’d kiss you right now,” he joked.
Colin took a long sip of his coffee, its perfect velvety foam leaving a white frothy mustache on his upper lip. “This has got to be the best coffee I’ve ever tasted. Guys, I’ll never forget this.”
It was just past sunset, and the sky was shifting rapidly from shades of burnt orange into a deep violet blue. The men sat in awed silence, as the world’s largest monolith glowed and shimmered a thousand indescribable shades of crimson.
16
Dr. Gu
SINGAPORE
Wye Mun sat at his desk, studying the piece of paper his daughter had just handed him. The ornate desk was a replica of the one Napoleon used at the Tuileries, with a satinwood veneer and ormolu legs of lions’ heads and torsos that descended into elaborate claws. Wye Mun loved to sit in his burgundy velvet Empire chair and rub his socked feet against the bulbous golden claws, a habit his wife constantly scolded him for. Today, it was Peik Lin who substituted for her mother. “Dad, you’re going to rub off all the gold if you don’t stop doing that!”
Wye Mun ignored her and kept scratching his toes compulsively. He stared at the names Peik Lin had written down during her phone conversation a few days ago with Racheclass="underline" James Young, Rosemary T’sien, Oliver T’sien, Jacqueline Ling. Who were these people behind that mysterious old gate on Tyersall Road? Not recognizing any of these names bothered him more than he was willing to admit. Wye Mun couldn’t help but remember what his father always said: “Never forget we are Hainanese, son. We are the descendants of servants and seamen. We always have to work harder to prove our worth.”
Even from a young age, Wye Mun had been made aware that being the Chinese-educated son of a Hainanese immigrant put him at a disadvantage to the aristocratic Straits Chinese landowners or the Hokkiens that dominated the banking industry. His father had come to Singapore as a fourteen-year-old laborer and built a construction business out of sheer sweat and tenacity, and as their family business blossomed over the decades into a far-flung empire, Wye Mun thought that he had leveled the playing field. Singapore was a meritocracy, and whoever performed well was invited into the winner’s circle. But those people — those people behind the gates were a sudden reminder that this was not entirely the case.
With his children all grown up now, it was time for the next generation to keep conquering new territory. His eldest son, Peik Wing, had done well by marrying the daughter of a junior MP, a Cantonese girl who was brought up a Christian, no less. P.T. was still fooling around and enjoying his playboy ways, so the focus now was on Peik Lin. Out of his three children, Peik Lin took after him the most. She was his smartest, most ambitious, and — dare he admit it — most attractive child. She was the one he felt confident would surpass all of them and make a truly brilliant match, linking the Gohs with one of Singapore’s blue-blooded families. He could sense from the way his daughter spoke that she was onto something, and he was determined to help her dig deeper. “I think it’s time we paid a visit to Dr. Gu,” he said to his daughter.
Dr. Gu was a retired doctor in his late eighties, an eccentric who lived alone in a small, dilapidated house at the bottom of Dunearn Road. He was born in Xian to a family of scholars, but moved to Singapore in his youth for schooling. In the natural order of how Singapore society worked, Wye Mun and Dr. Gu might never have crossed paths had it not been for Dr. Gu’s maddening stubbornness some thirty-odd years ago.
Goh Developments had been building a new complex of semidetached houses along Dunearn Road, and Dr. Gu’s little plot of land was the sole obstruction to the project getting under way. His neighbors had been bought out under extremely favorable terms, but Dr. Gu refused to budge. After all of his lawyers had failed in their negotiations, Wye Mun drove to the house himself, armed with his checkbook and determined to talk some sense into the old fart. Instead, the brilliant old curmudgeon convinced him to alter his entire scheme, and the revised development turned out to be even more of a success because of his recommendations. Wye Mun now found himself visiting his new friend to offer him a job. Dr. Gu refused, but Wye Mun would keep coming back, enthralled by Dr. Gu’s encyclopedic knowledge of Singapore history, his acute analysis of the financial markets, and his wonderful Longjing tea.
Wye Mun and Peik Lin drove over to Dr. Gu’s house, parking Wye Mun’s shiny new Maserati Quattroporte just outside the rust-corroded metal gate.
“I can’t believe he still lives here,” Peik Lin said, as they walked down the cracked cement driveway. “Shouldn’t he be in a retirement home by now?”
“I think he manages okay. He has a maid, and also two daughters, you know,” Wye Mun said.
“He was smart not to sell out to you thirty years ago. This little piece of land is worth even more of a fortune now. It’s the last undeveloped plot on Dunearn Road, we can probably even build a very sleek, narrow apartment tower here,” Peik Lin commented.
“I tell you lah, he intends to die in this shack. Did I tell you what I heard from my stockbroker Mr. Oei many years ago? Dr. Gu is sitting on one million shares of HSBC.”
“What?” Peik Lin turned to her father in amazed shock. “One million shares? That’s more than fifty million in today’s dollars!”
“He started buying HSBC shares in the forties. I heard this tidbit twenty years ago, and the stock has split how many times since then? I tell you, old Dr. Gu is worth hundreds of millions by now.”