Spy Without a Cause by Neil Thomas

Author:Neil Thomas [Thomas, Neil]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Thorogood Publishing
Published: 2020-09-06T22:00:00+00:00

9

The evening was interesting, from the moment we got to the Marco Polo from Rodney’s – and reception had agreed to post the envelope I’d been given to Simon – until I got back to my room much, much later.

Miguel and I had discussed the kind of job he could do if he was working for me, either with Langleys or in our new venture. We agreed that he could start anyway on a trial few months and we talked salary and general terms. It seemed sensible to show him the local offices of Langleys out in Jurong and we arranged to do that the next day.

Our pleasant chat in the lobby bar was, however, disturbed by Kenneth Minter and Eric Old, loudly saying hello to a large, rather bulky man, who was obviously, by the sound of him, an American and whom we hadn’t noticed before, sitting in the far corner talking with a smart-looking Chinese man, a businessman we assumed by the look of him.

Inevitably, as soon as Kenneth saw us, he was over and insisting we both join them.

‘You must meet Bill Brumby and his partner Tong Lim – they run a book distribution and direct mail marketing company – they could be very useful to you.’ He wasn’t wrong about that.

Our tea abandoned, cocktails took over with the blustery Bill trying to tell us what tipple to drink – ‘you can’t go wrong with a Gin Martini’ – but then ordering us large versions of whatever we wanted and arguing with the others as to where we should go for food, which, he insisted, had to be hawker food from Gluttons Corner. That figures!

Miguel and I just went along with them, relieved to be able to concentrate on publishing industry chat. Tong Lim and Miguel seemed to be talking turkey about mutually beneficial business opportunities and that seemed to please Bill as much as it did me. Kenneth kept nudging me in an I-told-you-so manner.

Bill and Eric spent the evening planning a Singapore publishing exhibition and it all seemed for a while like it was an evening at the Frankfurt Book Fair, but with a Far Eastern twist: too much to drink, too much mutual back scratching, too many empty promises, too few realistic timetables, much slagging off of industry competitors, very little agreed action, and no responsibility for outcomes.

Kenneth and I, left to our own devices conversation-wise, caught up a bit on Hong Kong gossip and I realised he counted me as part of his semi-secret world, merely because I seemed to know a few people in it that he either revered or feared.

I tried to pump him for more info on Tufty McMasters and he tried to pump me for what I knew about Rodney. We were both wary of giving too much away, but I did hear that Manila and Sydney were likely ports of call in the coming year for Tufty and NonDom, his aptly named yacht.

Kenneth, cleverly, revealed only a few nuggets at a time, and I twigged that he was trading with me.

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