I am truly grateful for the comments and follows and the kind words; they make my day. By way of TMI, I am chronically depressive (and do nothing about it), and now that I have lost another source of guaranteed pure enjoyment, both as a nice person and as a continuing fun franchise, seeing that people have fun with the plots and characters I write is a much-appreciated pick-me-up.
This bit is the original ending of the previous chapter (have I confused you yet?) I've now cornered myself into an embarrassing faulty-logic plot hole in the next chapter and will need to figure my way out of it so that it still ties in with what follows before I can type it up.
On the plus side, it will finally give me a chance to sit down and realise the long-cherished dream of answering comments! I've been really rude in the past few months despite good intentions, but now you've been warned ;)
And seeing the monster the next chapter was set to become, I think I'll do one more chapter split, the final one, to end up with a total of 22 + postscript. I was half hoping to finish it before Christmas, but I admit that the plan may be too ambitious.
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xxx
The bird park was a nice idea; she makes a mental note to thank Bruce. Maybe they both can go back there when – if – they are done with the mission. Back in her room, she orders dinner and sets the alarm for 6 AM the following morning, thinking she will go to bed as soon as she has eaten, and hoping she will not wake up in the middle of the night as a result.
It will take about twenty minutes to half an hour for the restaurant to have her order ready, they told her, which gives her time for a quick shower followed by a more intriguing proposition. Glancing at the time again – ten minutes to the early estimate – she steps over to the safe to check out the diamonds Bruce bought. She was telling the truth when she said to Theo that she was no longer a diamond fiend; but professional curiosity still gives her itchy fingers.
The first thing she sees inside the safe is a folded piece of paper revealing a note in familiar handwriting. The treasure-hunt-clue style is still very much in evidence, she thinks with a wry smile. 80 Mandai Lake Rd, your namesake's fence, 11 pm, bring your ears. Must be a pawnshop or similar, judging by the fence mention, a place receiving stolen goods. Maybe Bruce has changed his mind and thinks it will be best if she brings the surety in cash, after all, and a criminal fence is the fastest and easiest way of doing a deal. Seems a risky strategy to employ in Singapore, but after the Kitty screw-up, she does not feel inclined to question his judgement too closely in the immediate future. Maybe his sellers in Bangkok gave him the reference. What the hell does he mean by namesake, though? She has had at least five sets of names he has been aware of, apart from dozens she used before that he has presumably not seen or heard. Selina, Celine, Chiara, Shivagowri, Sahar; Kyle, Caille, Damiani, Sivaparan, Al-Jaber… which one does he mean? Oh well, once she gets there she will look at the nearby business signs and see which one ticks a familiar-name box. And why does she need infrared goggles? Surely if he meant the earring bugs, he would have written wear your earrings instead of bring your ears…
Further inside the safe, wedged between the box containing her bugged jewellery and the goggles, sitting on top of a stack of appraisal certificates, is what looks like a large zip-up pocketbook. She pulls it out and opens the zipper – and her eyes widen at the flash of intense blue followed by a soft thud against the carpeted floor. A memory flits through her mind, the Wainwright card in her hand and the pearls dropping to the floor in Hong Kong, sixteen months ago. She leaves the folder inside the safe and stoops to pick up the escaped item, an emerald-cut Ceylon sapphire the colour of twilight sky barely small enough not to qualify as humongous, set in a platinum ring. So that is what the fence must be for; the diamonds Bruce was able to buy must be worth less than the required half a million, and the ring must be making up the difference. Except that at two-thirds by half-inch and about a third of an inch deep, it surely weighs at least 20 carats, and at this near-flawless quality and striking cornflower blue colour, it must be worth about half a million dollars in its own right.
What seemed like a plausible scenario for an instant is further undermined by a look at the diamonds inside the folder. There are thirty credit card-sized pieces of laminated cardboard bearing the IGI logo arranged in transparent vinyl pockets on several pages, a single round brilliant-cut diamond sitting in a plastic blister in the middle of each one like a weird sparkling pill, and Bruce either knows enough about diamonds to be a savvy buyer or else had excellent advice from the dealers. She does not even need to check the labels on the cards to know that they are exactly the same one-carat weight, and even in this light and without a magnifying glass, she can tell that they are pure white, a perfect D/E colour, and while probably not flawless, they certainly look like the next best thing, a VVS1 or VVS2 at the limit. Allowing for this slight variation in inclusion magnitude, they must be priced at about fifteen to twenty thousand each. She goes back to the safe and quickly flips through the stack of folded appraisal reports to see her guess confirmed price-wise; she does not have time for an exact calculation, but could bet that if she did, she would arrive at exactly half a million. So the ring was just a way to spend the remainder. Shame if they end up selling it; her interest in jewellery has cooled, but she would be willing to make an exception for something as simple and yet stunning as this. Then again, he said bring your ears, not bring anything that could denote the ring.
She replaces the jewels and closes the safe in time for the waiter to show up, but as soon as he is gone, she picks up her tablet to take a look at Mandai Lake Road and try to figure out what place she is going to. The mystery is resolved as soon as she types up the address, even before the map comes up, and has her laughing: the address is that of the Singapore Zoo, which, apparently, hosts a "night safari" every evening until midnight to let visitors take a peek at nocturnal animals. The fence is literal, then – and she realises in a flash that the namesake in the note refers to her Sri Lankan alter ego's nickname; white tigress. Interesting. Does not quite seem like a business appointment. She resets the alarm and hopes that staying awake through most of last night will let her fall asleep fast enough to catch a couple of hours' rest before getting out.
xxx
It definitely is not a business appointment. It is, in fact, one hell of a romantic setting. Not something you would normally expect from a zoo, but the Singapore Zoo is apparently famous for its landscaping and for housing its animals in non-restrictive enclosures similar to their natural environments, with just the barriers necessary to make sure they do not run off and to guarantee visitor safety. The part that is open at night is now punctuated by the dim glimmer of soft lighting, just enough to save people from tripping on the paths and to make the animals visible. She is glad she allowed herself an extra half hour before the stated time; her initial reason was to find the right fence, but it has also given her a chance to wander around. The goggles were a nice idea; it is too dark for other visitors to notice that she is wearing them under the black niqab, and they let her see much more of what is going on than the other visitors can.
She has been at the white tiger enclosure for about five minutes when Bruce arrives, or rather when she becomes aware of him having snuck up next to her.
"Hi," he says softly in her ear, his hand brushing against her arm. "Been here long?"
"Just got here. Nice place."
"Glad you like it." She can tell he is smiling even without looking at him.
"I thought you'd be at dinner still."
"Felt like some fresh air." She chuckles at the old quip. "Theo had the smart idea of calling me in Italian, and as soon as I got back after giving him the glass I told Kitty it had been my boss who had an urgent task for me."
"So it went well?"
"Yeah. Got her prints and neither of us got caught. Told her I was going to be busy for a couple of days, hopefully she'll hold back from propositioning me again in the meantime."
"Did she proposition you now?" Admittedly, her question is more playful than suspicious.
He chuckles. "Tried to. I played along until I got the call, but you should have seen my concerned face after that, when I took off like my pants were on fire."
"I can imagine." Bruce has mellowed out in the past year, but he is still good at concerned faces.
"I take it you've seen the diamonds," he prompts next.
"Yep. Good choice, best value you could get for that carat weight and perfect as currency. What about the ring? You planning to sell it?" She hopes her regret is not too obvious.
"No, the ring's for you." She turns sharply to look at him. "If you like it."
"I do," she admits. "I don't really need any jewellery, I have the other ring and the pearls and it's more than enough to wear when I want to dress up, but that one's a gorgeous sapphire."
He looks pleased. "I hoped you'd like it. I got it in Bangkok same time as the diamonds. Figured I've never really given you a wedding ring."
"So the world's most expensive engagement ring by a factor of ten presumably isn't enough," she teases.
"Of course not," he teases back. "It would go well with that blue dress you've got. I thought I'd give it to you… later… but there's no point putting it off. You know there's also a jewellery show in Singapore starting this weekend?"
"The JewelFest? I know." She has never been, but has certainly heard of it. In fact, she remembers stealing a few pieces from a rich asshole who had just bought them at one of the previous events three years ago.
"We can go there next week and see if there's something else you'd like."
"We can go there," she agrees. "But I told you, I've got all I need, between the pearls and the other ring and now this one."
He does not sound convinced. "We'll see about that. Now, as soon as you've seen enough of this gorgeous creature, I suggest we get away from the night safari area and take a walk on the dark side." This time, with her veiled face half turned to him, she does see him smiling.
"You sure you won't get lost there, or do you want me to hold your hand?" It would seem strange for a veiled Arab woman to be leading a guy by the hand, but it is a. dark and b. nobody's business.
"Don't worry." He pulls a pair of what looks like thick sunglasses from his shirt pocket. "I've got my own gear."
xxx
It is a thrill, for sure. Her teenage years were spent living on the streets, stealing what she could and evading capture by cops and criminals alike, but if she could re-imagine it without the risk and hardship, this is what her idea of a teenage adventure would be like, sneaking away with a sexy boyfriend for a bit of illicit fun in the middle of the night.
They manage to make it unchallenged past the simple barriers cordoning off the night visit area, into the vast darkness filled with soft noises. Soon they are surrounded by what must look like complete darkness to anyone without night vision gear; she flips back the veil and lifts up her goggles for a second and almost stumbles. Bruce instantly catches her, his hands resting on her waist. She gets hold of his hand and lowers the goggles again, just long enough to step over to the nearest support they can lean against, an information panel looking like a sloping desk. She wants to turn and face him but he won't let her, standing right behind her and slowly running his hands up and down her sides.
"This feels nice." Sure it does; as soon as she figured she was likely going on a date, she decided that the only thing she was going to wear under the abaya was a satin slip, and the echo of coarser fabric sliding against the smooth silk under his touch is a luxurious caress. But between the veil and the abaya, she is fast becoming aware of being overdressed for the occasion; after a minute or so of this, she wants to feel his hands on bare skin – and she could kill for a kiss. She stays his hands just long enough to pull off the disguise, leaving her wearing the slip and nothing else. "I hope it doesn't get us into jail."
"Won't," he says confidently. "Their definition of pornography is being seen naked and performing lewd acts. We, on the other hand, are not seen," he mutters into her ear in between kissing her neck, "and we aren't having sex just yet." She can agree with the former argument, but the latter one is unlikely to hold for more than a few minutes.
"This set-up is turning me into a secret lover to my wife," he goes on. "Not complaining, obviously."
She tilts her head back enough to let him kiss her on the mouth. "You have other duties, amore," she whispers against his lips, "now that you're the designated honeytrap."
He chuckles, his breath soft against her cheek. "Better me than you, or else I'd have gone crazy for sure. The fact that I try to keep jealousy in check doesn't mean I don't feel it. But I'm doing my best to adapt to your ways, be it your right to flirt with guys or us having sex in public places."
"You're doing great." She half twists to face him for a proper, longer kiss, as she pulls up his shirt and runs her hands up and down his back underneath it. Between his words and the delicious sensation, it feels so good as to make her feel guilty again for yesterday's fit of fury.
"I'm sorry." She presses her face into the crook of his neck.
He takes her face in both hands and holds it a fraction of an inch away from his. "What for?"
"Being a stupid bitch last night. Yelling at you. Hitting you with the towel. Twice."
His response is a soft laugh. "I put it down to foreplay." He turns her around again so he stands against her back, his hands free to roam over her satin-clad body, though it does not take him long to lift the slip out of the way. He is almost leisurely, except that his hands are trembling as he strokes her.
"I was so – so pissed off," she manages in a faltering voice. She cannot muster the courage to say hurt, but suspects he will figure it out, – "that I bought a ticket to Rio on my way to the hotel. Figured I'd go there to keep away from you and learn hang-gliding." There is no way she is mentioning the Armando part.
His reaction is perfectly calm and purely practical. "For what date?"
"Got the full-price open-date, I put September 10th and figured I'd change it when I knew my plans."
"Can I suggest something?"
She tilts her head and kisses him lightly for a reply.
"Keep the date, change whatever else needs to be changed, and I'll join you there and teach you myself. If you don't mind."
She turns around, her fingers working to undo his shirt buttons, then pulls off the shirt and kisses him harder. "Do I look like I mind?"
"Did you really think I'd wait until I got married to start fucking around on you?" he asks, all of a sudden.
Her reasoning ability is dwindling by the instant, but she has enough left to point out a factual inaccuracy. "Well, technically speaking, start is incorrect considering your past life."
He laughs. "OK, resume; it doesn't change the substance. I'd never do something as stupid as bed another woman to risk offending you."
"I know. Don't remind me."
"I will remind you," he insists, and just as she is about to cringe at the prospect, he goes on. "I won't remind you of Kitty, but I will remind you how much I love you, as often as I can, so you're never in doubt. You know, what I said the other day about Rachel, how I could never have her and it kept me wanting to fight to get her? Well, even being married to you, I think I have to fight for your affections every day."
He has her affections now and forever, but she is too busy kissing him to say it.
.
TBC
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Notes
The Singapore Zoo night safari is real and fun, even though I did not have a hot boyfriend to tag along when I saw it ;) The zoo's main site is at [http www] zoo*com*sg and the night safari link is at [http www] nightsafari*com*sg/ - it markets itself as a separate exhibit (to justify separate tickets, I suspect :p) but is on the same, or at least adjoining, grounds. The white tiger exhibit is also real, though I am not 100% sure that it is, in fact, on the night safari itinerary: [http www] zoo*com*sg/exhibits-zones/white-tiger*html#ad-image-0
Ceylon blue sapphires are one of the two most prized blue sapphire varieties, the other one being Kashmir blue. Both are an intense cornflower colour; blue sapphire value is, if you wish, a bell curve with these two kinds at the top and lighter and darker varieties on the respective curve slopes (e.g. Thai Kanchanaburi and especially Australian, both of which tend to be very dark blue, are far less valuable. It is a similar thing for rubies, where the most prized deep red is called pigeon blood. But I digress…) The following link shows what I was going for, more or less, though I do not mention diamond shoulders in my version: [http www] jewelsdujour*com/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/20-carat-burmese-sapphire-ring1-e1348862044805*jpg There is a description of this ring on the main page hosting the photo at [http www] jewelsdujour*com/2012/09/good-better-betteridge/ along with many other items, including a few really stunning ones.
Diamonds are valued by four criteria:
(1) carat weight;
(2) colour (for white diamonds, that is, the whiter the better, normally graded from D or D/E down to Z for obviously yellow ones; fancy coloured ones such as bright yellow or orange or blue have less uniform pricing);
(3) clarity, as in extent of inclusions, from flawless (FL) to "internally flawless" (IF) to "very very small inclusions" (VVS1/VVS2) to "very small inclusions" (VS1/VS2) to "small inclusions" (SI1/SI2/SI3) to "inclusions" plainly visible to the naked eye (I1/I2); and
(4) cut (for a reason I fail to understand, the most common round brilliant-cut costs more per carat than, say, emerald-cut or princess-cut or pear, all of which look nicer).
As a result, there are matrix tables for white (non-fancy) round brilliant-cut diamonds depending on weight, colour, and clarity, with pretty standardised pricing. I could not find the table I originally used, but here is a similar example with virtually the same prices: [http www] jewelry1*com/diamond/prices*htm
IGI is one of the global agencies certifying diamonds, the other reputable ones being GIA and AGS (both US) and HRD (Belgium). My description of the modern diamond blister packaging is a best-efforts representation of this: [http www] serendipitydiamonds*co*uk/blog/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/IGI-diamond-certificates*jpg .
The Singapore JewelFest is a real annual event. I cheated, however, in moving it to, presumably, August; in reality it is held in October: [http www] singaporejewelfest*com/index*php