Don Brown: The Malacca Conspiracy

Should he call the chairman? Would waking the chairman make him look like an overanxious greenhorn?

He flipped out his cell phone and hit “1” on the speed dial.

“Good morning,” Janie Morgan’s velvety, if sleepy, voice said.

“Sorry to call so early. Something’s up.”

“Mmm.” The sound of sheets fluffing. “What?”

“Crude oil. Two limit moves in an hour. Light, sweet crude. Just got a second trade halt in the last fifteen minutes.”

A second passed. “Wow.” Janie sounded wide awake now. “Two in fifteen minutes? I’ve never heard of that.”

“No kidding,” he said.

“What’s going on?”

“Dunno. Think I should call Chairman Goldstein?”

“Hmm. I’m not sure,” she said. “Let me think.”

“I don’t want to look panicky, but still…”

“Hmm. Know what?”

“What?”

“I’d call. Better safe than sorry.”

That wasn’t what he wanted to hear, but it confirmed his gut instinct. “I thought you’d say that. I’ll call him right now. If he gets hacked off that I ran him out of bed, so be it.”

“He won’t,” she said. “If he does, blame me.”

“No chance,” he said.

“Call me later. Love you.”

“You too.”

Robert hung up, then picked up the phone again. He punched the speed dial ringing directly to the residence of the chairman of the Merchantile Exchange. After two rings, a groggy voice answered.

“Mister Chairman…Robert Molster at the sweet light crude desk…Sorry if I woke you…Yes, sir…I think we may have something strange going in the futures markets.”

USS Reuben James

The Strait of Malacca

Two hours earlier

The sun beat down on the slate-gray steel, heating the deck near the bow of the guided missile frigate. From his station at the forward lookout post, Boatswain’s Mate, First Class Elliot Cisco swiped perspiration from his forehead, then positioned his binoculars off the port side of the ship.

Out to the left, about a thousand yards from the Reuben James, the tanker SeaRiver Baytown, her belly full of Persian Gulf crude oil, churned low through the blue waters of the Malaccan Straits.

About a thousand yards beyond the Baytown, but not visible from this vantage point, the USS Kauffman, another Oliver Hazard Perry-class guided missile frigate, guarded the other side of the tanker.

If anything went wrong, Cisco hoped it would come from the other side-and that the Kauffman would have to deal with it. Swinging his binoculars out in front of the bow, he knew that wasn’t likely.

USS Kauffman was guarding the waters between the tanker and Malaysia.

USS Reuben James, on the other hand, was guarding the waters between the tanker and the Indonesian island of Sumatra.

Naval Intelligence had warned that radical threats to maritime shipping, and thus the world’s economy, would likely be launched from the heavily populated Indonesian islands of Sumatra and Java.

Clear seas appeared in the binoculars out in front of the ship. Cisco took in the morning breeze that was whipping in from the southwest. Swiping his right hand across his forehead, he brought the high-powered glasses back to his eyes and swept the horizon to the right, out toward Sumatra. Slowly, he scanned in a clockwise turn, stopping his sweep at the three o’clock position.

Nothing but blue waters and a mountainous shoreline.

Moving his view to the left again, back toward the bow, a flash swept across the seascape.

He stopped the binoculars and angled back to the right. Nothing. Were his eyes deceiving him? That could happen at sea.

What was it? Reflection off glass? The engine of a boat? A whale? Where was it?

Whatever it was, it was too low in the water for the ship’s radar to detect.

He readjusted the powerful binoculars.

Nothing but blue water.

There! Again!

The inbound flash bounced off the water, perhaps a mile out to the starboard.

Cisco held the binoculars in place and adjusted the focus ring, bringing the image into focus. The sun was reflecting against the windshield of a speedboat!

He picked up the watch telephone.

“Chief, small craft at three o’clock! Inbound at high speed! One mile and closing, sir!”

Rasa Sentosa Resort

Sentosa Island, Singapore

11:16 a.m.

Sweet strains of violin music blended magically with the single cello, filling the air with a classical melody that blanketed the mumbling voices nearby. Swooshing water streams jetted from a half-dozen indoor fountains, muffling the clicks of bellmen’s leather shoes traipsing across the expansive marble floors.

Behind the reservations desk in the main lobby, Ashlyn Claire hardly noticed the typical midday sounds of the luxurious Rasa Sentosa, Singapore’s only beachfront resort.

At the moment, her agenda was single-minded-to coordinate with housekeeping to ensure that more than fifty rooms were cleared out in time for check-in, which was still two-and-a-half hours away.

At a world-class resort like the Rasa Sentosa, nothing could prove more disastrous to the career of an aspiring young hotel management intern than to send a well-paying guest to a room that had not been properly prepared.

A small smudge on an obscure portion of a mirror or a window.

An overlooked thumbprint on a faucet in the sink.

A slight wrinkle on a comforter.

Not acceptable.

Ashlyn checked the screen again. Still nothing open. Not yet anyway. Except for the block of rooms reserved for the British prime minister’s advance team.

Therein lay the problem.

British Prime Minister John Suddath was in Singapore for a controversial summit with the president of Singapore over the future of Changi Naval Base. The Brits and the Americans were pressing Singapore to expand the base to accommodate more ships for the Royal and US Navies to patrol the Strait of Malacca. The Americans would pay for the upgrades. That’s what Singaporean television was reporting, anyway.

But Malaysia, Indonesia, and China had protested the deal.

Protests erupted all over the region, and someone leaked that Suddath’s advance team was staying at the Rasa Sentosa. Then two days ago, rumors flew that Suddath himself was staying at the hotel.

That rumor ignited the picketers. Yesterday, more than two hundred paraded in front of the hotel, clogging the main entrance and blocking guest registrations.

Last night, the British and Singaporean governments issued joint communiqués that the PM would be staying at Istana Merdeka, the Singaporean presidential palace, during his stay in the city.

That thinned out the picketers. But even this morning, about twenty of them still strutted in an oblong circle, bobbing their signs deriding the US and the UK.

Ashlyn checked her watch. Twelve-thirty. Nothing to do but wait.

A whiff of alluring cologne took her focus off the terminal. A smiling, olive-skinned gentleman stood behind the reservations desk.

“May I help you, sir?” she asked.

“You don’t look Singaporean.” The gentleman’s eyes danced at her. “Australian? South African?”

His friendly expression and sparkling black eyes exuded an immediate, spellbinding charm.

Was he Indian? Pakistani? Middle Eastern? He sported an amazing British accent, wherever he was from. And the white suit enhanced his dark, handsome features.

“I’m British,” she said, with pride in her voice.

“That’s a brave admission considering those lunatics out there.” He nodded toward the hotel entrance, with a dubious half-grin.

“Yes, well…” She glanced outside at the picketers, then back at the man. “Could I help you with something, sir?”

“I’m Ahmed.” He cleared his voice. “Edward Ahmed. Doctor Edward Ahmed. I’m here for check-in.”