All the while, Charlie’s mind kept churning nonstop. He had coerced Astrid into coming on this afternoon sail because he wanted to make a confession. He wanted to tell her that he had never stopped loving her, not for one moment, and that his marriage one year after their breakup had been nothing but a mindless rebound. He had never truly loved Isabel, and their marriage was doomed from the start because of it. There were so many things Charlie wanted her to know, but he knew it was too late to tell them.
At least she had loved him once. At least he had four good years with the girl he had loved since he was fifteen, since the night he had watched her sing “Pass It On” on the beach during a church youth group outing. (His family had been Taoists, but his mother had forced all of them to attend First Methodist so they could mix with a ritzier crowd.) He could still remember the way the flickering bonfire made her long wavy hair shimmer in the most exquisite reds and golds, how her entire being glowed like Botticelli’s Venus as she so sweetly sang:
“Can I make a suggestion, Astrid?” Charlie said as the junk made its way back to Repulse Bay to drop her off.
“What?” Astrid asked sleepily.
“When you get home tomorrow, do nothing. Just go back to your normal life. Don’t make any announcements, and don’t grant Michael a quick divorce.”
“Why not?”
“I have a feeling Michael could have a change of heart.”
“What makes you think that will happen?”
“Well, I’m a guy, and I know how guys think. At this point, Michael’s played all his cards, he’s gotten a huge load off his chest. There’s something really cathartic about that, about owning up to your truth. Now, if you let him have some time to himself, I think you’ll find that he might be receptive to a reconciliation a few months down the line.”
Astrid was dubious. “Really? But he was so adamant about wanting a divorce.”
“Think about it — Michael’s deluded himself into thinking he’s been trapped in an impossible marriage for the past five years. But a funny thing happens when men truly get a taste of freedom, especially when they’re accustomed to married life. They begin to crave that domestic bliss again. They want to re-create it. Look, he told you the sex was still great. He told you he didn’t blame you, aside from blowing too much money on clothes. My instinct tells me that if you just let him be, he will come back.”
“Well, it’s worth a try, isn’t it?” Astrid said hopefully.
“It is. But you have to promise me two things: first, you need to live your life the way you want to, instead of how you think Michael would want you to. Move into one of your favorite houses, dress however it pleases you. I really feel that what ate into Michael was the way you spent all your time tiptoeing around him, trying to be someone you weren’t. Your overcompensating for him only increased his feelings of inadequacy.”
“Okay,” Astrid said, trying to soak it all in.
“Second, promise me you won’t grant him a divorce for at least one year, no matter how much he begs for it. Just stall him. Once you sign the papers, you lose the chance of him ever coming back,” Charlie said.
“I promise.”
As soon as Astrid had disembarked from the junk at Repulse Bay, Charlie made a phone call to Aaron Shek, the chief financial officer of Wu Microsystems.
“Aaron, how’s our share price doing today?”
“We’re up two percent.”
“Great, great. Aaron, I want you to do me a special favor … I want you to look up a small digital firm based in Singapore called Cloud Nine Solutions.”
“Cloud Nine …” Aaron began, keying the name into his computer. “Headquartered in Jurong?”
“Yes, that’s the one. Aaron, I want you to acquire the company tomorrow. Start low, but I want you to end up offering at least fifteen million for it. Actually, how many partners are there?”
“I see two registered partners. Michael Teo and Adrian Balakrishnan.”
“Okay, bid thirty million.”
“Charlie, you can’t be serious? The book value on that company is only—”
“No, I’m dead serious,” Charlie cut in. “Start a fake bidding war between some of our subsidiaries if you have to. Now listen carefully. After the deal is done, I want you to vest Michael Teo, the founding partner, with class-A stock options, then I want you to bundle it with that Cupertino start-up we acquired last month and the software developer in Zhongguancun. Then, I want us to do an IPO on the Shanghai Stock Exchange next month.”
“Next month?”
“Yes, it has to happen very quickly. Put the word out on the street, let your contacts at Bloomberg TV know about it, hell, drop a hint to Henry Blodget if you think it will help drive up the share price. But at the end of the day I want those class-A stock options to be worth at least $250 million. Keep it off the books, and set up a shell corporation in Liechtenstein if you have to. Just make sure there are no links back to me. Never, ever.”
“Okay, you got it.” Aaron was used to his boss’s idiosyncratic requests.
“Thank you, Aaron. See you at CAA on Sunday with the kids.”
The eighteenth-century Chinese junk pulled into Aberdeen Harbour just as the first evening lights began to turn on in the dense cityscape hugging the southern shore of Hong Kong Island. Charlie let out a deep sigh. If he didn’t have a chance of getting Astrid back, he at least wanted to try to help her. He wanted her to find love again with her husband. He wanted to see the joy return to Astrid’s face, that glow he had witnessed all those years ago at the bonfire on the beach. He wanted to pass it on.
18
Villa d’Oro
SINGAPORE
Peik Lin walked down the stairs carrying a Bottega Veneta tote. Behind her were two Indonesian maids bearing a pair of Goyard suitcases and a carry-on valise.
“You do realize that we’re going to be there for one night? You look like you’ve packed enough for a monthlong safari,” Rachel said incredulously.
“Oh please, a girl’s gotta have options,” Peik Lin said, tossing her hair comically.
They were about to embark on the trip to Shenzhen, where Rachel had arranged to meet her father, an inmate at Dongguan Prison. She had initially been reluctant to set foot on another private jet, but Peik Lin had prevailed upon her.
“Trust me, Rachel. We can do this the easy way or the hard way,” Peik Lin said. “The hard way is to fly for four and a half hours on some third-rate airline and land in the clusterfuck that is Shenzhen Bao’an International Airport, where we can wait in a customs line for the rest of the day with thirty thousand of your closest friends — the vast majority of whom have never heard of antiperspirant and won’t share the same concept of personal space as you do. Or, we can call up NetJets right now and fly on leather seats made from cows that have never seen barbed wire and drink Veuve Clicquot for the two and a half hours it takes to fly to Shenzhen, where upon landing, a young, fit customs officer will climb aboard our plane, stamp our passports, flirt with you because you’re so pretty, and send us on our merry way. You know, flying private isn’t always about showing off. Sometimes it can actually be for convenience and ease. But I’ll defer to you. If you really want to go the chicken-bus route, I’m game.”