The Jungle

They landed at Changi Airport, to the north of the futuristic city-state of Singapore. Its skyline was punctuated by some of the most beautiful architecture in the world, including the new Marina Bay Sands Hotel, their destination. Hanley was nearly inconsolable when Juan told him they wouldn’t have the time to hit the hotel’s casino.

As was usual when arriving on a private jet, customs was a mere formality. The uniformed agent met them at the stairs when they stepped from the plane, glanced at, then stamped, their passports, and didn’t ask to see the contents of Cabrillo’s sleek briefcase, not that they were hiding anything in it.

Though they had flown casual, both had put on suits and ties just prior to landing. Juan wore an elegantly cut charcoal, with a faint pinstripe that was picked up in the colors of his two-hundred-dollar tie. His brogues were buffed to a glossy black. Keeping shoes spit-polished was a fetish he shared with the Oregon’s steward. Max wasn’t wearing off-the-rack exactly, but he looked uncomfortable. His collar dug into the spare flesh around his neck, and there was the tiniest trace of an old stain on his left sleeve.

The air was decidedly warmer here than in Karachi, and while they couldn’t detect it over the smell of hot asphalt and jet fuel, it carried the tropical humidity associated with the sea. The Equator was only eighty-five miles to their south.

Juan checked his watch, an all-black Movado that was barely thicker than a piece of paper. “We’ve got an hour. Perfect.”

Though offered a super-stretch limousine, they took a less ostentatious town car into the city. Traffic was absolute murder and yet remarkably polite. There were no blaring horns, no aggressive driving techniques. It made Juan recall that for all its wealth and sophistication, Singapore was virtually a police state. Free speech was severely limited, and spitting on a sidewalk could get you caned. This tended to create a homogenous population with a keen respect for the law, and thus no one cut you off or flipped you the bird.

Their destination rose along the water in three gracefully sloped white towers, each more than fifty stories tall. Atop them was a platform that stretched for nearly a fifth of a mile, one part of it cantilevering off the third tower a good two hundred feet. This was known as the SkyPark, and even from a distance they could see the profusion of trees and shrubbery that adorned it. The SkyPark side facing the marina was composed of three infinity edge swimming pools holding almost four hundred thousand gallons of water.

At the base of the hotel towers were three enormous domed buildings housing the casino, exclusive shops, and convention spaces. Rumor had it, the casino resort was the second most expensive on the planet.

The car pulled up to the hotel entrance, and a liveried doorman was there even before the tires had stopped turning.

“Welcome to the Marina Bay Sands,” he said in cultured English. Cabrillo suspected that had he looked Scandinavian he would have been greeted in flawless Swedish. “Do you have any baggage?”

Juan jerked a finger at where Max was heaving himself out of the car. “Just him.”

They stepped through into the hotel’s soaring lobby. It was crowded with vacationers. A group of them were assembled for some sort of tour and were receiving instructions in singsong Chinese from a female guide who couldn’t have been four and a half feet tall. The line waiting to check in snaked through a velvet-rope maze. With twenty-five hundred rooms, this was more like a small city than a single enterprise.

Juan found the concierge desk and told the attractive Malay girl that she had an envelope for him. He gave his name, and she asked for identification. Inside the envelope was a credit-card-style room key and one of Roland Croissard’s business cards. Scrawled on the back was the financier’s room number.

They needed to show the armed guard near the elevators that they had a proper room key. Juan flashed it, and they gained entry. They took the car up to the fortieth floor with a Korean couple who were arguing the entire way. Cabrillo imagined that the man had gambled away the family kimchi money.

The hallways were muted and somewhat dimly lit. Unlike the layout of some of the megacasinos they had been in, the three-tower design meant they weren’t left walking forever to find the right room. Cabrillo knocked on Croissard’s door.

“Moment,” a voice said, dropping the t like a French speaker.

The door opened. The man standing there nearly blocking the door from jamb to jamb was not Roland Croissard. They’d seen photographs of him while researching his background.

In that first half second Juan noted that the man’s jacket was off, his hands empty, and his expression wasn’t overtly aggressive. This wasn’t an ambush, and so he relaxed his right arm, which was about to deliver a karate strike to the man’s nose that more than likely would have killed him. The man grunted. He’d seen how quickly the Chairman had perceived and then discounted a potential threat.

“Monsieur Cabrillo?” the voice called from farther in the suite.

The gorilla who’d opened the door stepped aside. He was nearly as big as Franklin Lincoln, but where Linc’s face was normally open and easygoing, this one maintained a permanent scowl. His hair was dark, cut unfashionably, and looked like something from a 1970s adult movie. He had hooded, watchful eyes that tracked Juan as he stepped into the opulent two-room suite. He had shaved that morning but already needed another.

Hired muscle, was Cabrillo’s assumption, and too obvious about it. The good bodyguards were the ones you never suspected. They looked like accountants or entry-level CSRs at a bank, not hulking wrestler types who thought their size alone was intimidating enough. Juan resisted the impulse to put the guy down for the fun of it. The guard indicated that Juan and Max should fan open their coats so he could see if they were carrying concealed weapons. To get things moving along, the two men from the Corporation indulged him. He didn’t bother to check their ankles.

Cabrillo wondered if this guy was really that bad or if he’d been told these were expected guests and should be treated accordingly. He decided the latter, which meant the man had overstepped his authority by asking them to open their coats. His abilities went up a notch in Juan’s mind. He took protecting his boss more seriously than his orders to let them enter unmolested.

“Could you button your shirtsleeves, please?” Juan asked him.

“What?”

“Your sleeves are down but unbuttoned, which means you have a knife strapped to your forearm. I’ve already noticed you aren’t wearing an ankle holster, and yet somehow I don’t think you’re unarmed. Hence the unbuttoned sleeves.”

Roland Croissard rose from a sofa on the far end of the room. A briefcase and papers were strewn across the coffee table. A glass with ice and a clear liquid sat in a puddle of condensation. He wore suit pants and a tie. His jacket was draped across an overstuffed chair that was part of the same furniture cluster.

“It’s okay, John,” he said. “These men are here to help find Soleil.”

The guard, John, scowled a little deeper as he buttoned his cuffs. When he bent his elbow, the cotton of his shirt bulged against a low-profile knife sheath.

“Monsieur Cabrillo,” Croissard said. “Thank you so much for coming.”

The Swiss man was of medium height and starting to show a paunch, but he had a handsome face and penetrating blue eyes. His hair, an indeterminate shade, was thi