‘Okay, he can wait. Where are you?’
‘We’re in the US; Trenton, New Jersey. How soon can you get to us?’
‘Oz, I never leave South East Asia. I send someone, my most trusted person.’
‘Jimmy, we want to deal with you.’
‘I send you my right hand. You want me cut off real one, send that as proof?’
I looked at Dylan. He shrugged and nodded. ‘Okay,’ I conceded. ‘What do we do?’
‘Where is nearest airport?’
‘There’s one in here in Trenton,’ Dylan volunteered. ‘I saw a sign for it as we came into the city.’
‘Then that where we meet; you find meeting room in terminal, my person find you, give you letter of introduction from me. You hand over photos and have plane waiting; soon as it’s done, you all get hell out of there, you, woman. .’ he paused ‘. . and Mr Luker.’
‘Why?’ I asked.
‘Simple precaution, Oz,’ Mike said. ‘Jimmy doesn’t like to admit it, but the Triads are everywhere and there’s an outside chance they’ve penetrated his organisation. If his messenger has been followed, well, we don’t want to get caught there. Right, Jimmy?’
‘Right,’ Tan growled. ‘But only very outside chance.’
‘We won’t risk it, though,’ I decided. ‘I’ll have a private jet on the ground ready to move. When?’
‘It long flight, Singapore to eastern seaboard.’ He was silent, calculating. ‘Sunday morning here now, maybe can’t get on a plane tonight. Make it six, Monday evening, USA time.’
‘Right; we’ll be ready.’ I frowned, as if he could see me. ‘When you get these photographs, Jimmy, you will shut these people down, won’t you?’
‘Oz,’ he chuckled, ‘they not know what hit them.’
45
The waiting, again. Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers were singing in my brain all that night and all through Sunday. Maddy never left her room, and she was never left alone either. The security bolt was on all night and during the day either Mike or I was always with her.
I left all the arrangements until the Monday morning as a tiny piece of extra security. They didn’t take long to make. I booked a twelve-seater Gulfstream jet, to be on the ground and fuelled up by five thirty, ready to take off on command, destination Newark, ready to connect with a British Airways flight to Heathrow for Mrs Primavera Blackstone, Ms Madeleine January and me, and with the train to Penn Station for Mr Benedict Luker.
The terminal building at Trenton Mercer Airport is very small, they told me, but they did have a VIP room which they’d be happy to prepare for the private use of my party and me prior to our flight.
The charter company wanted passenger names in advance: a TSA requirement, they said. I gave them mine, Prim’s and Benny’s, and they didn’t quibble over the fourth member of the group, Doe, Jane, Ms.
When all that was done, I left Mike guarding our charge and took my ex-wife for a walk, a tour of the State Capitol building, an impressive pile, which is, they say, the second oldest in the US. Neither of us was really interested, though: there were things, I sensed, that we wanted, no, needed, to say to each other, but they’d take more time than we had available.
That’s the trouble with the really important things, and time. Too often, there isn’t enough of it; too often, it’s the wrong moment. That, of course, just ain’t true. For matters important enough, there’s always enough time; there’s never a wrong moment.
But, as it was, we whiled away a couple of hours, looking at old stones in silence, until it was time to gather the team and get the show on the road.
I drove us the short distance to the airport in the rental car. I’d arranged for Hertz to collect it. It was five forty when we arrived, were greeted by the airport manager and shown into our private room. As he left us, Madeleine stepped up to me. She kissed my cheek, and slipped a small square envelope into the breast pocket of my shirt. ‘Just a little card,’ she whispered, ‘to say sorry and thanks for everything.’
We sat on our hands for the next twenty minutes. I’d set the alarm on my watch for six exactly. Everybody jumped when it went off.
Two more minutes went by, before we heard a soft knock on the door. I went across, opened it, and almost cried out in my surprise. Standing there in a silk dress with a slit up the side, a bag over her shoulder and her letter of introduction clutched in her hand was Marie Lin. ‘What the hell?’ I gasped.
‘My father sent me,’ she said. ‘He trusts nobody in the world more than me.’
46
When I stood aside to allow her into the room, I could see the flash of astonishment in Mike’s eyes, but he controlled it well, and didn’t let it transfer to his mouth.
She insisted that I read her letter of introduction, and I went along with it. The notepaper bore the embossed crest of the Government of Singapore.
Dear Oz [it began],
Allow me to introduce formally my daughter, Tan May Wee, who is my emissary in this matter. I apologise if this has come as a surprise to you, but I ask you to accept that when one’s father is head of the security police it is wise to pursue one’s profession under an assumed name.
Marie is indeed an aspiring actress, and she was very honoured to make your acquaintance in Singapore, although she was unaware, until I told her of the incident in the Next Page, that you had made mine.
She is a good, brave woman, and you may trust her to complete our mission properly and to return the material safely to me, so that use may be made of it. Yours truly Jimmy
When I’d finished, I passed it to Mike; he read it in turn, unsmiling, then put it back into its envelope and handed it back to me.
‘Okay,’ I said to Maddy. ‘This is Marie, the agent of the Singapore security service, and she’s here to take charge of your pictures. So, hand them over and let’s get the hell out of here.’
She looked at me, almost gratefully, then reached into her bag, removed an HP personal organiser, a state-of-the-art model, and handed it over. ‘Go to “Home” then “Pictures” if you want to see them,’ she offered.
‘My father said I must not look at them,’ Marie told her, ‘for my own safety.’ She switched off the palmtop and removed the memory card from its slot. ‘They are stored here?’ Maddy nodded. ‘Then that will be sufficient.’ She handed back the wee silver computer.
‘Good,’ I said. ‘Now, come on. Let’s board the jet.’
A second door in the VIP room led directly on to the tarmac. I opened it, and found the co-pilot waiting outside. ‘If you’ll come with me,’ he said. He was a big, beefy lad with a blond crew-cut. His ID said he was called Scott, and he looked as if, at some point in his college career, he could have been a pretty effective nose tackle.
Mike took each of the girls by the elbow and steered them after the officer towards the Gulfstream, which was parked only thirty yards away. They wheeled their luggage and his was slung over his shoulder. I waited in the doorway with Marie. ‘I want to thank you for this,’ I told her, ‘and your father. You’ve saved a woman’s life here.’
She looked at me as she had as she disappeared down the escalator at the Clarke Quay MRT station, the last time I’d seen her. ‘Then thank me,’ she whispered. ‘Stay behind with me for a while. I know you well enough now.’
I felt a tiny shudder run through me. I almost turned and walked away, as I bloody well should have done. Instead I looked at her, or maybe the devil in me looked at her. Again, I almost turned away, and then I heard inside my head a voice, crystal clear, a voice I’d known all my life: Jan’s voice, my sister’s voice, my soul-mate’s voice.
‘You can trust this girl,’ it said. ‘You can trust her with your life.’
I turned and looked towards the plane. The other three were on board, and Scott was standing at the top of the steps. ‘Go on without me,’ I shouted to him. ‘I’ve changed my mind. I’ll drive the hire car back to New York.’