Lies and Weddings(119)

“A Miss Hong Kong pregnant out of wedlock? What a scandal! What happened to her?”

Rosina sighed sadly. “Gam seui, ah![*5] She flew secretly to Perth to have an abortion, but shortly afterward we heard she died of sepsis. She was one of my closest friends, and I never got to say goodbye. It happened so suddenly, and you know what, the strangest thing of all is how—” Rosina suddenly let out a gasp before going very quiet.

“Rosina? Are you there?”

“Hiyah, how am I so stupid! It’s been staring me right in the face this whole time…,” Rosina muttered to herself.

“What’s staring you in the face?” Arabella asked, confused.

“Arabella…where’s Thomas Tong now?”

“I have no idea. He’s no longer my doctor,” Arabella said coldly.

“I mean, is he in England, Asia, America?”

“I would assume he’s right down the road in his tiny sad cottage.”

“Sit tight. I’ll call you back. I may have unearthed something…to your benefit. Trust me, this is going to change everything!”

“What? Tell me!” Arabella demanded.

Rosina hung up without another word.




Skip Notes

*1 “Fish congee” in Cantonese. Rosina’s chef prepared her rice congee with dried scallops, fresh pomfret, abalone slices, delicate slivers of ginger, and a sprinkling of golden fried shallots.



*2 It should be Lord Francis Gresham, of course, not Rufus. The Post needs to hire better fact-checkers.



*3 Rosina wasn’t actually on safari. She was in Seoul getting a very subtle brow lift.



*4 “Cockroach” in Cantonese.



*5 “So cursed!” in Cantonese.





Coron, 2013


PALAWAN ISLANDS, PHILIPPINES




They were speeding past tiny atolls in the most crystalline blue waters Thomas had ever seen. With the spray of salt water on his face and the sun on his back, he felt invigorated after his twenty-plus-hour journey from England to this remote island chain in the Sulu Sea. This trip had been six months in the making, and after the most delicate of negotiations, under the cloak of intense secrecy, he was finally going to meet Rene Tan, the mysterious financier who had agreed to lend Francis Gresham a hundred million dollars, off the books.

Thomas glanced at the silent man sitting at the back of the boat, a semiautomatic rifle lodged between his feet. The speedboat pulled up to the jetty of an island, and as Thomas disembarked he could see in the distance a magnificent sleek glass house peeking out through the dense tropical foliage. Soon, he was ensconced within the compound of this private estate, seated on an antique wooden chair with incongruously long arms, drinking ice-cold kalamansi juice and gazing out at a beautiful lagoon.

Behind him came the gravelly laugh of a man’s voice. “Do you know what the chair is for?”

Thomas turned around and saw a man in his fifties, thick around the middle but robust in stature, dressed in a nylon jogging suit and baseball cap. “I don’t,” Thomas said, rising from the chair to shake his hand.

The man did not extend his hand. Instead, he said, “That’s a nineteenth-century birthing chair. The woman puts her legs up on those wide arms, and it helps position her when she goes into labor.”

“Of course,” Thomas said. “You must be Mr. Tan?”

“Indeed I am.”

“You’ve got quite a place here. It’s the most beautiful private island I’ve ever been to.”

“You go to many private islands?”

“This is my first, actually.”

“Mine too. No one invites me anywhere. I’m not fit for polite society, you know. All the Filipino grandees, they’ll do business with me, but I’m never invited over to their country estates in Calatagan or their resort villas in Punta Fuego. Which is why I created this paradise for myself. Now of course they are all begging to be invited, but I don’t have many people over. Truth be told, I hate rich people. Most of them are motherfucking bores. The older the money, the more intolerable to me. You know, I credit two people in the whole world for making me who I am. The first is Enrique Tan—”

“The industrialist who built much of the modern Philippines,” Thomas remarked.

“Yes, you’ve heard of him. I was his partner on most of those projects. I did all the dirty work, and when he died, childless—well, he had a few bastards here and there but no official kids—he left me the business. And I expanded into construction in South America, Central Asia, and Africa. I’m the one who made this business big-time.”

“I see. And who was the other person who helped you?”

“Your father. Dr. George Tong.”

Thomas stared at him in surprise.

“You don’t have a fucking clue who I am, do you?”

Thomas shook his head.

Rene let out a conspiratorial laugh. “Let me give you a clue.”

He led Thomas into the next room, a vast, elegant drawing room filled with contemporary tropical wooden furniture. By the fireplace that was large enough to roast a whole cow was a B?sendorfer concert grand piano. With the flick of a button, the piano began playing by itself. Debussy’s “Clair de Lune.” A chill went up Thomas’s spine as he approached the piano. Sitting on the ledge of the piano was a single silver-framed photo of Thomas’s wife.