That Singking Feeling
Alex considered what traps the envelope could possibly contain.
The obvious one was some sort of poison. He couldn't touch the inside – the outside was clean, hopefully, to avoid raising suspicion if the staff member delivering it was found poisoned –or risk breathing it in. He couldn't open it somewhere where other people might be, either.
Assuming it was anthrax or a similar chemical, if he held his breath while keeping his nose and mouth covered with a wet cloth, he might be able to avoid inhalation. If he wore a balaclava, ski gloves and a long-sleeved shirt tucked in, with thermal underwear and thick socks, skin contact may be avoided. Then, he could read the note and determine whether it was safe. If it was, he'd be fine. If not, he'd read it, burn it, wash the ashes with microbial soap from his manbag and throw the remnants in two shower caps, twisted tightly to prevent leakage.
Hopefully that would be enough. He imagined the torment that obsessive-compulsive people suffered just washing their hands, and gave thanks that he didn't suffer from that particular mental difficulty.
So Alex – after first turning the air-conditioning to 5 degrees Celsius – dressed with many layers to prevent contact, and took the letter to the shower where he could hopefully contain any spores that may escape. He had his first-aid kit from his manbag on hand, just in case.
He opened the envelope: nothing happened.
Well, nothing that he noticed. He withdrew the letter. It read:
Alex, my boy! I heard you went looking for me in Brazil. Sorry I couldn't stay, but work called me away. Anyway, some mutual friends of ours asked me to pass a message on, okay?
"HAPPY BIRTHDAY"
Why don't you light a candle to celebrate despite your lack of cake? I've heard Singapore sells some very nice desserts that you can buy in any hawkers market. I would recommend ice kacang, to assist with temperature control. ;)
Smithers
Well it certainly sounded like the gadget-master he knew (except for the smiley, though that wasn't unexpected, per se). Later, he may have reprimanded himself for taking such a risk, but Alex, in his sleep-deprived state, decided to trust the letter and exited the shower, stripping off the extra layers. He turned up the air-conditioning again with one thing niggling in his mind: it wasn't his birthday yet, nor would it be until February 13 next year. Smithers would have known that. So why had he wished him happy birthday? There was something he was missing, but for now, all he was missing was sleep.
xxx
Later that day, Alex awoke to the cramping pains that accompanied an empty stomach. And no wonder; when he checked the alarm clock beside the bed, four digital glowing-green reading 13:00. Really? How on earth had he managed to sleep for seven hours in daylight? Was it the darkness brought by the closed curtains, the stress of the past days, or just the general late-ish nature of Singapore as a nation? Even now, as he looked out the window, people seemed only just beginning to rouse and once more join the hustle and bustle on the streets. Perhaps it was just the area he was in.
Alex himself was still feeling rather sleepy, and decided to take the rest of this day relaxing and recovering and thinking. As his teachers used to say: if you're feeling tired, you might as well go to sleep and do your work later, when you're properly rested and can make the most learning from whatever work you have to do.
Well, maybe not so ineloquently, but that was the general idea.
And thus, by ten-past, he stood at the doors opening to the pool on the sixth floor. As he passed through the doors, Alex noted the counter on the left, holding towels, and a basket on the right with used towels. A sign read belligerently: please deposit all soiled towels in the basket. He sniggered briefly in his mind at the word 'soiled'.
From the cover beside the counter, Alex walked out, briefly wincing at the blazing midday sun burning his skin and blinding him. Perhaps now wasn't such a good time to swim.
But Alex would never be one to back down if he could help it, and so he squeezed the suncream he had so wisely decided to bring, and rubbed it in. Hopefully Smithers' general creations worked just as well as his gadgets, and better than other suncreams. Hopefully it wouldn't work like the bug repellent back on Skeleton Key, and leave him as burnt as a deep-fried mars bar.
Once protected, he followed the walkway over a moat surrounding a small concrete platform. The moat, in its inky depths, contained schools of koi; white, black, gold and a combination of all three. Maybe it was just his hunger, but in that moment the koi looked good enough to eat, never mind their being carp and therefore having lots of tiny, annoying bones. Unfortunately, he had no way of catching them, save for with his bare hands, and he walked on.
The pool was only about two metres deep, but Alex dived in anyway, after depositing his stuff on one of the beach chairs. Beneath the shade of high-rise buildings surrounding the hotel, he swam a couple of laps, enjoying the sensation of cool water rushing past his skin. His injuries twinged a bit, but that was to be expected. He had been lazy for too long, and it'd be good if he could return to football back home with no noticeable loss of fitness. His coach would be more accommodating, hopefully.
After about a quarter of an hour, Alex grew tired of swimming laps, and lolled on his back in the middle of the pool. His eyes were just about to drift shut when voices caught his attention: a gaggle of girls and overly-large bug sunglasses were traipsing towards him, giggling under their giant floppy hats. So much for the peacefulness of the pool; one of the girls was carrying a rainbow-striped beach ball under her arm.
Before they could reach him, he clambered out of the water, and grabbed his towel and kit. With a carefully carefree expression, Alex took a circuitous route around the other side of the pool to the girls, and headed back inside, through the glass doors and to the lifts.
He checked his watch: 13:30. Time for lunch.
xxx
Next to the hotel was a small adjoining shopping centre called '100AM', empty save for a few business women grabbing a quick snack before rushing off on the first day of the working week. Here, on the ground floor Alex found a small urban café called Hic'cup, selling crepes both sweet and savoury, and Asian drinks. For only $10.90, he was able to order a wintermelon drink, a savoury crepe and fruit salad. What a bargain.
As he sat down to wait at one of the metal tables, a young boy with an older girl came in. The child was chatting eagerly about a book he had read, while the girl went behind the counter and tied on an apron. In the background, Sia sang about bullets ricocheting, a song Alex hoped was a good omen.
His order arrived, the crepe with mushrooms, egg, asparagus, honey mustard and cheese, and the drink with something called 'kanten strips'. The crepe was on a small, rectangular wooden plate with a divot cut out in the middle. On the side was a set of metal cutlery, small enough to be from toy set. Cute, but he'd expected that from a small, cute Asian place called Hic'cup.
The food was good, and Alex finished quickly. As he leant back in his seat, the man who had taken his order approached with a cake on a plate.
"Excuse me, but we have a new recipe. Would you be willing to try it and give us feedback?"
Alex hesitated. He'd been lax the past few days, eating whatever caught his fancy and hardly exercising, but the free cake was too enticing. He was drooling already.
"Of course!"
As he ate, the child kept prattling on at the table closest to the counter. Apparently the book featured a trio of some sort of junior investigators, one of them being named after a planet or something. They used a secret messaging system whereby they'd write an innocuous message in ink, but use lemon juice for the true message on the back. It was called invisible ink and it was old news, Alex wanted to tell the kid.
Alex sipped at his drink, which strangely came in a jar with a metal screw-top lid. He'd finished his meal, so now it was back to work and figuring out the message back in his room.
Wait a minute.
Invisible ink! The letter had told him to light a candle. Of course, that was it. Smithers was hardly going to send him something without hiding or disguising it some way.
Alex approached the counter, gave some vague words complimenting the cake, and mentioned that it was perhaps a bit dry and crumbly, though of course its taste and lack of cost far outweighed any problems with it. And with that, he made his exit.
xxx
The pyromaniac held the paper over the flickering flame, light passing through the letter and lighting his face eerily. Slowly, letters began to brown on the paper, and the pyromaniac's face lit up in a triumphant grin. He blew out the match, and the spell was broken.
Even at first glance, it was clear the message made no sense forwards, backwards, sideways or in the mirror. It was complete nonsense. There weren't even hidden words – there were too few vowels.
HRLFFW XHMDCG
UDMZEDY
VFW X' JMRCM BV
Right. Now what? He had to do something; couldn't sit in his hotel room all day when he was trying to get back and join his football team before the season ended.
Alex decided to take a walk. Perhaps the fresh air would help him think.
xxx
Orchard road bustled with shoppers who hurried, heads bowed, from building to building trying to keep cover from the rain that had appeared out of nowhere, drenching the unwary. Meanwhile, the streets were packed with Jaguars, Porsches, Maseratis and Ferraris polished to a shining point.
Alex, ambling around the city in a daze, had walked further than he thought, and had somehow managed to find himself in the shopping district just as the rain started.
Pushing past shrieking, giggling girls holding newspapers over their heads, he entered a random building lit by a bright sign proclaiming it to be 'Takashimaya'. Inside, the light was more golden than even in the hotel, colouring the normally white floor buttercup, and giving a sense of old and distinguished elegance. At the foot of the escalators was a small statue urging for funds for the endangered pangolin.
Upstairs, Alex wondered into a bookstore, ignoring designer shops with icy attendants. Maybe he could relax in silence there, let his mind turn the problem over in his subconscious.
The walls were liberally lined with books, and several bookcases too. It was the largest bookstore he'd ever seen. It was fairly empty though, for such a large store; however, that was to be expected, it being Monday. There were some tourists, of varying nationalities.
Near the finance section was a man with flattened black hair parted on the side, loose lips and a milky eye muttering in English something about bonds and casinos; a silvery-haired woman with awe-inspiring looks was pointing out the Chinese superstition and curse books to her red-headed husband who looked like he'd been ravaged by a dog.
Alex himself wandered over to the maths section, the only quiet place where he could think properly. Even so, the general murmur of the shop wasn't conducive to solving problems. Alex found his eyes drifting over the titles of the books. There was something about a Number Devil, something else about an imaginary square and a slightly more interesting-looking one called Victor and Vicky, the Vector Virgins. He closed his eyes and picked one at random.
Fun With Numbers: A Mathematical Adventure.
Well that was an oxymoron, 'Mathematical Adventure'. Alex suppressed a laugh. Sure, maths problems could be challenging and finding the solution could be immensely satisfying, but nothing in a book could ever capture the heart-stopping fear and adrenalin of true danger. After MI6, Alex had been unable to appreciate books as he'd used to be able to. He constantly criticised James Bond in his mind for performing irrelevant and dangerous stunts, he cursed Lady Macbeth for giving herself away, and he condemned Robert Langdon for trusting Teabing.
Still, the blond ex-spy opened the book to the index and scanned the chapter titles, eventually choosing Cryptology for the Curious.
Most of it was generic, obvious stuff like adding one letter or hiding the message in every prime-numbered word. Other things, like the 'Hill Cipher' were unknown to Alex's non-mathematical brain. What did multiplying matrices to modulo 27 even mean?
Alex was just about to close the book when something caught his eye, some mention of dates. Smithers had gotten the wrong date for his birthday. Could it be related?
He read the passage with growing excitement.
By the end, Alex was sure that the message had been written with a date shift cipher, a cipher that used the digits of a certain date to shift letters.
But was his birthday meant to be written as 13/02/1987 or 2/13/1987 or 87/2/13? There were so many variations; surely the gadget-maestro wouldn't be so cruel as to force him to try all of them.
Surreptitiously, he withdrew the letter, hoping a clue could be found somewhere.
In his peripheral vision, Alex saw a small, rotund man with a neat black moustache waddle in to the crime section, examining the books with a small moue and tut of disdain. Alex turned away from the newcomer and examined the letter.
There! In the corner of the letter, where the date was meant to be written, Smithers had written in dd/mm/yyyy. Perfect!
Alex shifted the letters according to the instructions of the date shift cipher, and was left – finally! – with a message that almost made sense:
GOLDEN PALACE
TUESDAY
TEN O' CLOCK AM
Alex had to get a move on finding where and what the Golden Palace was, because Tuesday was tomorrow. Well, that was good timing by Smithers. He wondered if the maths book had been somehow planted by Smithers or MI6. He wouldn't be surprised.
xxx
By the time Alex made his way back to Tanjong Pagar, where the hotel was – and thank goodness for the train system, the MRT; he'd done enough walking for the day – it was half-six and he was hungry once more. The Maxwell Road Hawker Centre provided a close option for dinner.
The markets in Singapore were a lot different to any food court or eating area Alex had ever been. In Europe, food courts were open, with separate buildings or sections for each different shop. Here, stalls clustered together with near-identical signs.
Alex spotted a stall called 'wanton noodle', and another called 'wanton pot', both with the same menu and same pictures. But the main thing was the atmosphere, almost cramped but full of a simple enjoyment of good, inexpensive food.
Aging men sat hunched over large bowls of some sort of white porridge with lumps of chicken, groups of friends laughed over sugarcane drinks and plates of noodles, tourists sat in cargo trousers and singlets, dubiously tasting pastries and colourful desserts.
Alex found himself an empty table, after ordering from a stall with a reasonably long queue. In front of him was barley water, some green vegetables in oyster sauce and a dish with what looked like noodles, but was called 'carrot cake'. It didn't look like it had carrot or was even a cake at all, but he took a tentative bite anyway, and almost died. It was probably one of the best tasting dishes he'd ever eaten. Clearly he'd have no troubles adjusting his tastebuds for Singapore.
Sure enough, he polished off the food in record time, hungry enough to contemplate a dessert. Ice kacang, with its rainbow syrup, was too much of a temptation to go without, and Alex ordered the frozen treat with gleeful anticipation. Given the man's size, Alex should be able to trust Smithers' recommendations regarding food. No-one, not even the thought of icy, could rob him of his gastro-euphoria that night.
He finished about five minutes later, leaning back from the table with a satisfied sigh. He smiled genially at a passing group of tourists, who only gave him half-smiles in return. But he wasn't deterred, and when a table-neighbour happened to look his way, he grinned at them too before almost skipping out of the place. The night was young, the lights were bright and the loud noises were but mild distractions in a world of wonder.
Despite his effusive joy, returning to the hotel brought a sense of relief from escaping the noise and lights of Singapore's city. The muted instrumental music and even the enthusiastic 'Doors opening!'from the lift were familiar friends to Alex, who stumbled into his room and sat down at the desk, taking the laptop from the drawer and logging on.
"Golden Palace," the website read, "located in the heart of Singapore City, is a restaurant of outstanding Asian cuisine."
So, a restaurant. That certainly wasn't a problem. Alex found the exact location, and noted it down, as well as the contact address. Best to make a reservation than arrive and find it full.
After switching off the laptop and letting it charge, Alex threw all his dirty clothes in the bathtub with some soap, swished them round and took a shower. They wouldn't be sparkling clean, but they would be decent. Perhaps he should buy some washing powder from the grocery in 100AM.
When he stepped out of the shower and dried himself off, he put on the bathrobe provided by the hotel, rinsed his clean-ish clothes and hung them on the washing line above the bathtub. He had no clothes pegs, but he hoped they would at least dry overnight. If not, well, whoever he was meeting would have to bear the smell of wet dog. He left the fan on to aid the drying process.
Climbing into the made bed after brushing his teeth almost made Alex weep. It was so nice to come back to a room all cleaned for you after a beautiful meal. His laptop was charging, his clothes were drying, his coach wasn't yelling (yet), he wasn't dying, this was a nice dwelling, and, best yet, he would soon be sleeping.
AN: More of a filler, really... Expect an update in about a fortnight, depending on how life treats me :)