Chapter 47
Singapore
Situated at the southernmost tip of the Malay Peninsula, straddling the equator, the South China Sea to one side, Indonesia and Indian Ocean to the other, Singapore has for centuries been a crossroads of trade and commerce. Arabs came from Jeddah, Indians from Delhi, Chinese from Canton, and Malays from the jungles to the north. Two hundred years ago, the British arrived to add a few drops of Western blood to the mix. More than any other country, Singapore was founded on the precepts of peaceful coexistence. All peoples and all religions were to be treated with equanimity and respect. If its residents shared a common deity, its name was prosperity.
So it was that in a ten-square-block perimeter one could find an authentic Chinatown, an Indian market that might be mistaken for its cousin in Mumbai, and an Arabian souk seemingly transplanted from old Mecca.
Near the souk, the Islamiya Fashion Boutique on Arabiya Street has offered the finest in Arabian menswear to a discerning clientele for over one hundred years. Its current proprietor, Faisal Faisali, a native Saudi, took ownership of the store in 1965, the year Singapore declared its independence from Malaysia. His timing was fortuitous. As the years passed, not only did Singapore grow wealthier, so did the countries of the Arabian Peninsula. Oil made the Arabs rich. Trade, the Singaporeans. There was a demand for new and fancier clothing. After all, what good was being rich if you were not able to show those around you?
Faisali’s offerings grew in style, color, and fabric. Traditional cottons were supplanted by fine Egyptian weaves and even finer Chinese silks. The standard men’s garment—the dishdasha, or thobe—became more decorative, with gold piping and filigree, ivory buttons, and cuffed hems. The keffiyeh, or ghutra, as it was called in Saudi Arabia, the square piece of cotton worn on the head and secured by the agal, also saw a flowering in design. Red, white, black, red checked, green checked, on and on.
If Faisali had to keep a larger stock, so be it. Sales from his three-hundred-square-foot store multiplied tenfold over the years and, along with prudent investments in real estate, had made him a wealthy man. No match for the sheikhs from the oil-rich kingdoms, but a millionaire many times over. Not bad for a street merchant’s son who had grown up selling dried almonds in Jeddah.
So it was with a feeling of abundant goodwill that he greeted the couple who stormed into his establishment at twenty minutes past six in the evening. The man was American, of average height and evident vigor with broad shoulders and eyes the color of bottle glass. The woman was Eurasian, quite beautiful, if excessively businesslike, but weren’t they all?
“How may I help you?” Faisali asked in his most refined English.
The man responded not in English, or French (another language Faisali spoke with fluency), but in his own Arabic. And not any Arabic, but the Arabic of the street. One might even say of the lower classes. In no uncertain terms, he described the articles of clothing required for him and for her, and that he wanted them as quickly as possible. To underscore his demands, he placed a fat stack of currency on the counter.
Faisali eyed the wad of bills and clapped his hands for his assistants to join them and get busy. He liked a man who knew what he wanted.
“But of course, Sheikh,” said Faisali, after he had slipped the currency into the deepest pocket of his dishdasha. “It is my pleasure.”
Chapter 48
Singapore
Not another cocktail party.
Hadrian Lester pasted on his most patient smile as he circled the SKAI Bar near the top of the Stamford Swissôtel. He said hello to all the usual suspects, making note of the VPs who had arrived early to get a head start on the weekend’s festivities. Demerits for all. The gathering was being held to celebrate the kickoff for HW’s third Indonesian sovereign wealth fund, appropriately titled “Future Indonesia 3.” He spotted Wing Lo, the deputy chief of compliance, holding court by the bar outside, or rather he spotted Wing Lo’s newest wristwatch, one of those million-dollar monstrosities tennis players and race-car drivers were wearing these days. He’d have to have a talk with Lo about toning things down. He was a salaried employee, not even a partner.
It was a beautiful spring evening. A few clouds here and there. A gentle breeze smelling of plumeria even seventy-five floors up. The view was unsurpassed, the city core to one side, the ocean to the other, limitless really. He walked to the railing. Directly below, some nine hundred feet, was St. Andrew’s Road and the Padang, the grass fields where old man Raffles himself had played his polo. He took a step back, stomach reeling. It was a long way down.
Hadrian greeted Sir Ian, the firm’s Scottish chairman, recently arrived from New York. Had he come to congratulate him or did he smell fire? A few feet away, a smashing brunette wearing a gold sheath of a cocktail dress gave him a wink. Helluva rack, too, if he might say.
“Hello, there,” he said, sauntering up next to her. “What’s a nice girl like you doing in a shithole like this?”
She put her lips to his ear. “Hoping to take home a tall, dark, handsome stranger and do very nasty things to him. Know anyone?”
“Just the bloke,” he said. “Standing right in front of you. Mind if I give the goods a check?”
Without permission, he gave the woman’s buttocks a firm squeeze. “Stop it,” said his wife, Beatrice, feigning alarm. “People will talk.”
“Let them. I hope about something other than finance for once.” He kissed her. “Buona sera, Contessa. You look absolutelyincantevole.”
Hadrian got them each a flute of champagne. Moët & Chandon Brut. Save the DP for when the fund closed. He’d prefer something stronger, an entire bottle of Johnnie Walker came to mind, but it didn’t do to drink at these events. He gave his phone a quick look. Still no word from Kruger. He’d been tempted to hustle over to Tanjong market himself to learn what happened, but he was far too busy to leave the office. The process of minting money was a twenty-four-hours-a-day job. Besides, no news was good news, wasn’t it?
“Listen, dearest, be a sweetheart and give Sir Ian’s balls a little tickle. He’s absolutely in love with you. Buff up the company stock, as it were. Maybe he can help me put a ‘sir’ in front of my name one of these days. ‘Sir Hadrian.’ I like the ring of it.”
Beatrice Lester moved off and engaged Sir Ian in conversation.
Hadrian surveyed the setup. They’d put a table in one corner stacked high with prospectuses and manned by a new hire from Kenya by way of the London School of Economics—with a serious set of tribal tom-toms. Some idiot had insisted on making a banner that readFUTURE INDONESIA 3in a font more appropriate to an action movie than a six-billion-dollar investment vehicle. Still, he really shouldn’t be too upset. The firm would bonus him twenty mil up-front, with the real action coming on the side. A hundred-mil commish from Nadya and something similar from the firm he and Tarek had set up in Zurich to peddle investments in rare earth minerals. They were done with oil leases.
It was then he saw the sheikh. Royalty, at first glance. The elegant white thobe, virginal ghutra, black-twine agal. Three-day beard. Sunglasses. And sandals to prove he was keeping one foot in the desert with his ancestors. That sealed it. A Qatari.
Hadrian could spot a prince at five hundred paces, tell you the branch of his family at a hundred, and give you his net worth at fifty. This was one of the new breed, which meant any man under sixty. Educated, cosmopolitan, probably an expert at one thing or another: drove fast cars, climbed tall mountains, collected signed first editions, though by the look of him, this one was a sportsman. None of that indolent Arab posture for him. The “Saudi slouch,” Lester called it.
The sheikh had his wife with him, or one of them, clad head to toe in a black abaya and niqab, not even her eyes visible, and standing a respectful step behind him. Might as well be the Middle Ages. Barbarians, thought Hadrian, but who was he to judge?
