“Nicky, there you are!” his grandmother said. She put her hand on his shoulder and said, “Now, say thank you to Mrs. Khoo.”
“Thanks, Mrs. Khoo. Good night, Colin,” he said with a grin, as his grandmother guided him out the front door and into the Mercedes. She climbed in after him, and Ling Jeh also got in, sitting on the folding seat in the middle row of the stretch limousine with the Thai lady’s maids. As the car door was about to shut, his father came rushing out. “Mummy, are you taking Nicky to—”
“Wah mai chup!”*3 Su Yi said sharply in Hokkien, turning away from her son as the guard shut the door firmly.
As the car pulled out of the Khoo residence, he asked his grandmother in Cantonese, “Are we going to your house?”
“Yes, I am taking you to Tyersall Park.”
“How long can I stay there?”
“For as long as you want.”
“Will Dad and Mum come to see me?”
“Only if they can learn to behave themselves,” Su Yi replied. His grandmother reached her arm out, drawing him closer, and he remembered being surprised by the gesture, by the softness of her body as he leaned against her while the car rocked gently back and forth as it navigated down the dark leafy lanes.
And now in a flash Nick found himself on that same dark lane again, more than two decades later, with Colin at the wheel of his Porsche. As the car wound along Tyersall Avenue, Nick felt like he knew every curve and bump of the road—the sudden dip that put them eye level with the gnarled ancient tree trunks, the dense overhang of foliage that kept it cool even on the hottest day. He must have walked or cycled down this narrow lane a thousand times as a kid. He realized for the first time that he was excited to be home again, and that the hurt he had felt over the past few years was fading. Without quite realizing it, he had already forgiven his grandmother.
The car pulled up to the familiar gates of Tyersall Park, and Colin breezily announced to the approaching guard, “I’m delivering Nicholas Young.”
The yellow-turbaned Gurkha peered in the front window of the car at the both of them and said, “I’m sorry, but we’re not expecting any more visitors tonight.”
“We’re not visitors. This is Nicholas Young right here. This is his grandmother’s house,” Colin insisted.
Nick leaned toward the driver’s seat, trying to get a better look at the guard. He didn’t recognize the man—he must have started working for Tyersall Park after his last visit. “Hey, I don’t think we’ve met before. I’m Nick—they are expecting my arrival up at the house.”
The guard turned around and went back into the guardhouse for a moment. He returned with a brown paper log and began flipping through the pages. Colin turned to Nick and snickered in disbelief. “Can you believe this?”
“I’m sorry, but I don’t see either of your names here, and we are under high alert at the moment. I’m afraid I’m going to have to ask you to turn around.”
“Look, is Vikram here? Can you please call Vikram?” Nick asked, beginning to lose his patience. Vikram, who headed the guard unit for the past two decades, would quickly put an end to this absurdity.
“Captain Ghale is off duty right now. He returns at eight tomorrow morning.”
“Well, call him, or call whoever the on-duty supervisor is.”
“That would be Sergeant Gurung,” the guard said, getting out his walkie-talkie. He began talking in Nepali into the device, and a few minutes later, an officer emerged from the darkness, having come from the main guardhouse up the road.
Nick recognized him immediately. “Hey, Joey, it’s me, Nick! Will you tell your friend here to let us through?”
The burly guard in the starched olive fatigues walked up to the passenger-side window with a big smile. “Nicky Young! It’s so good to see you! What has it been? Four, five years now?”
“I was last back in 2010. That’s why your compadre over here doesn’t know me.”
Sergeant Gurung leaned against the car window. “Listen, we are under specific orders here. I don’t quite know how to put this, but we’re not allowed to let you enter.”
* * *
*1 Malay for “bald-headed.” For some reason, the word has also become popular as a nickname for little boys with crew cuts.
*2 Singapore Chinese Girls’ School, which we ACS boys used to call Sucking Co—uh, never mind.
*3 Hokkien for “I couldn’t give a damn.”
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
TYERSALL PARK, SINGAPORE
TWENTY-FOUR HOURS EARLIER…
“Three, four, five,” Eddie counted as he stood by the window in the upstairs foyer, looking down the driveway. There were five cars in the motorcade—four, really, if you didn’t count the minivan transporting all the maids bringing up the rear. Auntie Catherine and her family had just flown in from Bangkok, and Eddie was surprised there were so few cars in their convoy. In the lead was a white Mercedes S-Class with diplomatic license plates, obviously provided by the Thai embassy, but the other cars were a random assortment: a BMW X5 SUV behind the Benz, an Audi that looked at least five years old, and that last car, he didn’t even have a clue what it was—it was some non-European four-door sedan, something that didn’t register on his list of acceptable vehicles to be seen in.
Yesterday, when he had arrived with his family from Hong Kong, his executive assistant, Stella, had arranged a fleet of six matching Carpathian Grey Range Rovers, making for an impressive entrance as the Cheng famille pulled up to the front door of Tyersall Park. Today he felt almost embarrassed for Auntie Catherine and her clan. Her husband, M.C. Taksin Aakara,*1 was one of the descendants of King Mongkut, and Eddie remembered every detail of his last visit to Thailand when he was nineteen as if it was yesterday: The sprawling compound of historic villas set in a garden paradise on the banks of the Chao Phraya River; the way his cousins James, Matt, and Adam had three servants each that would prostrate at their feet as if they were little gods, ready to attend to their every whim; the fleet of forest green BMWs idling in the front courtyard ready to take them to the polo club, the tennis club, or any of Sukhumvit’s hottest dance clubs; and Jessieanne, that sexy cousin of theirs who went down on him in the upstairs toilet of a pizza parlor in Hua Hin one night.