Devil's Gate (NUMA Files 9)

An informal count registered the crowd to be mixed about fifty-fifty: half were Western expatriates and the rest local citizens or visiting Asian businessmen.

Circling back around to the front of the house, Kurt took a seat at the main bar, which appeared to be made from a thin sheet of alabaster lit from below. It looked almost like glowing amber.

“Can I get you something?” a bartender quickly asked.

Joe smiled. Kurt knew he’d been to Singapore before. “I’ll have a Tiger,” he said.

“Perfect choice,” the bartender said, then turned to Kurt. “And you, sir?”

Kurt was still looking around, scanning for someone, anyone he might recognize, including the contact he’d phoned upon landing. No one looked familiar.

“Sir?”

“Coffee,” Kurt said. “Black.”

The man nodded and hustled off.

“Coffee,” Joe said, apparently surprised at Kurt’s choice of beverage. “Do you have any idea what time it is?”

Above them blue light flickered through the glass blocks of the skylight; either heat lightning in the distance or an approaching thunderstorm.

“I don’t even know what day it is,” Kurt said. “I barely know what planet we’re on.”

Joe laughed. “Well, don’t blame me if you’re up all night.”

“Somehow,” Kurt said, “I have a feeling I’m going to be.”

Kurt looked at the wall behind the bar. A six-foot canvas displaying a strapping Englishman in colonial garb stood front and center.

“Sir James Brooke,” Kurt said, reading the inscription on the brass plate at the bottom.

The bartender returned with their drinks and seemed to notice the focus of their attention. “The White Rajah,” he said.

“Really?”

“He put down a rebellion against the Sultan of Brunei in 1841 and was granted the title Rajah of Sarawak. He and his family ruled a small empire in what we now call Kuching for about a hundred years, until the Japanese invaded in 1941.”

“But Sarawak is across the strait,” Kurt said, knowing Sarawak and Kuching were on the neighboring island of Borneo.

“Yes,” the bartender said. “But when the war ended, the family gave the territory back to the British Empire. The club here was renamed in his honor.”

As the bartender shuffled off, Kurt took a sip of the rich, bold coffee, another step on the road to feeling like himself again.

Joe looked over at him. “So what are we doing in Singapore?” he asked. “Aside from getting a history lesson?”

Kurt began to explain. “Twelve years ago I did a salvage job down here,” he said. “One of my last jobs for the company before joining NUMA.”

Joe cocked his head. “Never heard this story.”

“It’s probably still classified,” Kurt said. “But since it matters now, I’ll give you the gist of it.”

Joe pulled his chair closer and glanced around as if looking for spies. Kurt laughed a bit.

“An E-6B Prowler got into trouble and went down in the South China Sea,” he said. “It was a prototype. There was all kinds of equipment on it that we didn’t want the other side finding, and the other side included China, Russia, and North Korea.”

“Still does, for the most part,” Joe said.

Kurt nodded. “The pilot was using a new side-scan radar and running right along the edge of Chinese airspace. We had reason to believe he’d gone off course and crossed over the line.”