Singapore Sling Shot - Andrew Grant [13]
Sami wanted me to retrieve something from the surrender room at the fort. That much I knew. Prior to doing that I needed to obtain all the information I could about the fort and the island. Information harvesting is an agent’s—or should I say former agent’s—stock-in-trade. As I stood there, Simone leaned into my shoulder, pointing and chattering. She was right into her role as the blonde, ditzy wife. While she talked, I grunted replies of a sort and analysed what I was seeing.
Beyond the bridge linking Sentosa to the mainland was an island filled with containers. It technically wasn’t an island any more because it was firmly attached to the mainland by a multi-lane umbilical cord. In addition to a mass of docked ships and containers there were what I guessed to be banks of offices or maybe condominiums on the island. What a combination! Imagine living right next door to one of the world’s busiest container ports. Singapore sure needed more land and I guessed what Sami and his guys were doing via the Intella development was providing that; after a fashion anyway.
A wide channel separated the island from the massive container port on the mainland shore. This fenced compound was dozens of containers deep and it stretched for kilometres from the Sentosa Bridge off into the distance. Huge fixed hoists and enormous blue-grey straddle carriers were working. The portside cranes were playing Pass the Parcel with containers, handing them on to the big straddle carriers that carried the boxes back from the dockside and stacked them into the rows that stretched back towards the city. Smaller yellow carriers scuttled around all over the place like huge, mechanical ants. These guys were repositioning containers and loading truck and tractor trailer units.
The whole operation of the container port seemed to me to be some sort of mechanised dance. Someone, somewhere was choreographing this insane two-step—or was it a foxtrot? Hell, I don’t know. Dancing isn’t my thing.
“It’s quite incredible, isn’t it?” Simone had dropped the ditzy act for the moment.
“Absolutely,” I agreed. A waitress was hovering behind us. I ordered a beer, Simone an orange juice.
“Too early for alcohol?”
“Don’t drink,” came the reply as we went and sat at a table. “My husband did, and that was part of the problem.”
There was no real reply to that one. I fired up my camera and flicked back over the images it had harvested to date. I sent most of them into the delete bin. I did keep a couple of good shots of my companion and one of she and I together standing in front of an enormous floral butterfly. Whether I was playing tourist or just keeping a snap or two of this very pretty woman for my own purposes, I had no idea. Sometimes the line between reality and fantasy can get a bit blurred with me.
The drinks came. Part of me wanted to feel a little ashamed of the pre-lunch beer while my companion abstained. The animal inside me, however, just laughed and told me to drink up. I did. There is nothing quite like a cold beer when the humidity is about ninety-eight percent. I knew my shirt was going to take a big sweat hit and I didn’t care. I was Ed the Tourist from Perth and tourists sweat in Asia. Actually, given the climatic similarity between Singapore and Hong Kong, I was used to the heat and humidity, and short of getting physical, a big cold beer was the easiest way to work up a convincing sweat. Therefore I could justify the brew. Not that I really had to justify it, of course.
Simone and I sat and drank our respective drinks. There was no one sitting within earshot, so we dropped the corny dialogue for the moment and let ourselves sit and talk like real people. It was a pleasant interlude. I debated a second beer but decided against it. I’d received a Sentosa map with my monorail ticket. It showed the island enlarged. So, just as all tourists do, I