World of Trouble (9786167611136) (19 page)

Shepherd drank the coffee and stayed silent.
He watched Keur with a neutral expression.

“How well did you know Adnan, Jack?”

“I didn’t really know him at all.”

“You don’t seem too upset about him getting
his head cut off. You didn’t like him?”

“I just told you. I didn’t really know
him.”

“Ever talk to him?” Keur asked.

“A few times.”

“What did you talk about?”

“Football. Religion. The usual stuff.”

“Yeah, if there’s anything those Lebanese
love, it’s shooting the shit about football and religion.” Keur
sighed. “If we’re going to get anywhere here, Jack, you’ve got to
be honest with me.”

“Why do you think I want to get anywhere
here?”

“What was your relationship with Adnan,
Jack?”

“He was Charlie Kitnarok’s personal
assistant. You already know I do some legal and financial work for
Charlie. Other than that, I had no relationship with Adnan.”

“Then what was Adnan doing in Bangkok?”

“I have no idea.”

“He didn’t come to see you?”

“No.”

“How did he get there then?”

Shepherd shrugged. “I’m just guessing here,
but maybe on an airplane?”

“You were a pretty well-thought-of guy in
Washington once, Jack. A real whiz kid. You still get paid a lot of
money for giving people financial advice. Maybe you were giving
Adnan financial advice.”

“I knew you were from the IRS.”

“You ever give Adnan any financial advice,
Jack?”

“Adnan who?”

“Don’t bullshit me, Jack.” Keur spread his
hands, palms up. “I bought you coffee.”

Shepherd drained the latte. He picked up the
brown paper bag and stuffed the empty cup back into it. Then,
taking his time about it, he crossed his legs at the ankle, leaned
against the backrest, and laced his fingers together behind his
head.

“What do you really want from me, Keur?”

“I already told you. I need to know what
General Kitnarok is involved in these days. I need your help to do
that.”

“No.”

“I’d like to find a way to change your
mind.”

“Is this where we get to the threats?”

“No threats. Let’s just talk for a while and
I’ll bet you’ll come around to my point of view.”

“Who the fuck
are
you, Keur?”

“I’m exactly who and what I told you I
am.”

“Bullshit. You’re not really FBI. There’s no
FBI investigation of Robert Darling or Blossom Trading. Who are
you? CIA?”

Keur pulled from his back pocket the same
leather ID folder that he had showed Shepherd the first time they
met. He opened it and held it up.

“I’m not with the CIA. I’m one of the good
guys.”

In spite of himself, Shepherd chuckled at
that. He bent forward and examined Keur’s ID closely. The badge on
the left side of the leather folder was shaped like a shield. It
was bright gold and glittered in the early morning sun. There was a
gold eagle perched on the top of the shield and raised lettering
all around it that said:
U.S. Department of Justice
,
Federal Bureau of Investigation
. The ID card on the right
was tucked behind a plastic window that was cracked and foggy and
showing its age. The card had a color headshot of Keur about the
size of a passport photograph and just about as sunny. It also had
four or five lines of printing, but by then Shepherd had lost
interest it what they said.

“That looks really good,” he said. “Can you
get me one just like it?”

“Ask your pal Logan to check me out if you
don’t believe I’m who I say I am.”

“I did.”

“And?”

Shepherd hesitated. “He says you’re an agent
assigned to the Washington field office.”

“So there you go.” Keur spread his hands,
palms up.

“But he also says the FBI isn’t conducting an
investigation of either Robert Darling or Blossom Trading. So even
if you really
are
an FBI agent, you’re just bullshitting me
anyway.”

Keur sighed, downed the rest of his coffee,
and shoved the empty cup into the brown bag with Shepherd’s. He
exhaled heavily.

“Logan’s right,” he said.

Shepherd said nothing. He just waited.

“I’m on my own here,” Keur went on.
“Officially, I’m on medical leave from the Bureau.”

“You look okay to me.”

“The Bureau killed the case I was building
against Darling and I got pissed off. I took a medical leave and
now I’m going to put everything together on my own and shove it
right down their fucking throats.”

“The CIA would probably spin a story exactly
like that if they sent out one of their guys to impersonate an FBI
agent.”

“Look, jerk off,” Keur twisted his body
toward Shepherd and leaned forward, resting his hands on his knees.
“I’m not CIA. It was those fucks at the CIA who buried my
investigation in the first place. I’d bet my life on it. And
whether you help me or not, I’m damn well going to prove it and
hang this all right around their fat, flabby necks.”

Shepherd said nothing.

“About two months ago,” Keur went on, “I
stumbled over Robert Darling and Blossom Trading in connection with
a money laundering case I was working on involving the casinos in
Atlantic City. It didn’t take much poking around to figure out that
Blossom Trading was a major arms trafficker and Darling was
laundering the revenue it generated through a number of different
casinos. He wasn’t even trying very hard to hide it.”

Shepherd said nothing.

“I took what I had to the Special Agent in
Charge of the Washington field office and asked him to authorize a
full investigation with Blossom Trading and Darling as the targets.
He sent it up the line. Less than twenty-four hours later, he
called me in and said he’d been instructed to tell me that both
Blossom Trading and Darling were off-limits, but he wouldn’t tell
me where those instructions had come from. He ordered me to
terminate my investigation immediately and to destroy whatever
notes I had. It flat out stunk.”

“So you think somebody is trying to cover up
something.”

“Of course they are. There’s no doubt about
it.”

“But cover up what? That the CIA is involved
somehow?”

“I don’t know.” Keur looked away. “I’m
working on that.”

“Exactly how do you plan—”

“Here’s the thing, Jack. A doctor I know
helped me get a medical leave from the Bureau, and… well, I’ve got
a month now, maybe two. And I’m going to use it to find out what’s
really going on here.”

“That’s
it
? That’s your plan?”

Keur looked off toward the lake. He didn’t
say anything else.

Shepherd followed Keur’s eyes and saw that
traffic around the lake was picking up. Two girls who couldn’t have
been over twenty-five and who were probably Japanese or Korean
jogged by together, both talking on mobile phones as they ran. They
were slim and lovely, small boned and smooth skinned, and Shepherd
had a moment’s regret that neither of them was talking to him.

“I need your help,” Keur said. “You need my
help. That sounds to me like the makings of a deal.”

“Why do I need your help?”

“Somebody is closing in on General Kitnarok,
Jack. They’re after all his key people, including you.”

“Who is it?”

“Ask Adnan,” Keur said.

Shepherd said nothing.

“You help me, Jack, and I’ll help you.
Nothing for nothing, man. You keep me in the picture about General
Kitnarok and I’ll keep you out of trouble.”

“Why do you care about Charlie anyway? I
thought you said it was Darling and Blossom Trading you were
after.”

“I want to make certain General Kitnarok
isn’t part of this. If he is, I’ll nail his ass, too.”

“That’s not a very convincing story, Keur.
You want to try again or just give up right here?”

“Ah, go fuck yourself, Jack. Do you want me
to watch your sorry ass or don’t you?”

“I’m not going to spy on a client for
you.”

“You’d really be helping to clear him. That’s
in his best interest.”

“No.”

“I can’t eliminate General Kitnarok as a part
of this without your help.”

“No.”

“Oh, I’m not so sure about that, Jack. In my
experience, people tend to be somewhat flexible about their
principles when their butt is on the line.”

“I’m out of here, pal,” Shepherd said as he
stood up. “I’ve had enough of this. You wasted your time coming
here.”

“It’s not that easy, Jack. They’re not going
to let you just walk away.”

“I’m not walking away. I’m
running
away.”

Then, before Keur could say anything else,
Shepherd turned his back and broke into a jog. The sun was rising
among the towers of Hong Kong’s financial district, a tight orange
ball burning holes in the grey morning mist, and Shepherd picked up
his pace, hurling himself straight at the sun until his breath came
in ragged jerks and his legs screamed for him to stop. But he
didn’t stop. He was sure he could hear a voice calling out to him
from somewhere to run away from Keur as fast as it was possible for
him to run, and that was exactly what he did.

Later, each time he thought back over
everything that happened afterward, the same feeling would return
to him over and over with a clarity verging on the telepathic. And
each time it did, he would shake his head in pure amazement at it
all, at the memory of how much he already understood that early
morning in Hong Kong Park.

Even though, at the time, he was sure he
understood nothing at all.

KEUR WATCHED SHEPHERD until he crossed Cotton Tree
Drive and disappeared behind the ugly white building that housed
the American Consulate. Then he stood up and stretched, collected
the crumpled bag with the two empty Starbucks cups in it, and
walked slowly in the direction of the Bank of China Tower.

Keur had never liked Hong Kong very much. It
was the nosiest, rudest, most overcrowded city he had ever been in,
and it had been a hell of a long way to come for a ten minute
conversation that didn’t appear to amount to all that much. Still,
he was convinced it had been worth it. He was beginning to get
inside Shepherd’s guard. He was sure of that now.

At first, using Jack Shepherd to get to
Charlie Kitnarok hadn’t seemed like much of a plan. Unless a
target’s lawyer was stupid or corrupt, preferably both, the lawyer
was never likely to be the road in, and Jack Shepherd was clearly
neither of those things. He had detailed intel on Shepherd and got
updates almost every day. He had studied Shepherd’s movements. He
had read transcripts of his telephone conversations. He was
beginning to understand him.

At first, he just hadn’t seen it. He hadn’t
thought this was going to work. He had to admit that. But now he
did. He could see that it
was
going to work.

Keur had always viewed recruitments like this
as similar to martial arts matches. You won, not by attacking your
opponent’s weaknesses, but by turning his strengths against him.
Jack Shepherd was a rational guy. He thought like a lawyer. He took
in information, examined that information from first one
perspective then another, compared it to other information, and
reached a measured conclusion as to what it meant. The conclusions
he reached were inevitably both intelligent and reasoned. They were
never emotional. That was his strength. And that was his
weakness.

Control the flow of information to Shepherd
and you control Shepherd. Make common cause with him. Build his
reliance on you. Make him trust you. And become the one who feeds
him information. How was he going to do that? It was the punch line
to a very old joke.
All you need is sincerity. And once you
learn to fake that, you’ve really got it made.

Keur chuckled to himself and walked a little
faster. The more he thought about it, the more pumped up he felt.
He was like the magician who distracted the audience with his left
hand while he picked their pockets with his right. He would keep
Shepherd focused on Robert Darling. Then, in another week or two,
he would reach out with his other hand and pry Charlie Kitnarok
open like a tin can. This was going to work. He could
feel
it now.

***

SHEPHERD TOOK A quick shower when he got back to
Freddy’s apartment, then he dressed and rode the Mid-levels
escalator down to his office. And the whole time he rode he kept
thinking about that hot cup of coffee Keur had waiting for him in
Hong Kong Park. Could he really be under surveillance, or was there
was a more mundane explanation for it?

All around him the escalator was jammed with
other people who looked like they were going to work, too. Or was
it possible that some of those people were there just to watch him?
How the hell was he supposed to tell? Other than what he had read
in spy novels, Shepherd knew nothing about surveillance and he
doubted he would be able to spot it unless somebody jumped out in
front of him and waved.

Of course, if there actually
were
people watching him, it meant the story Keur had told him about
being on a one-man crusade was complete horseshit. It took serious
manpower and local cooperation to keep someone under surveillance
in places like Hong Kong and Dubai. It wasn’t a job one guy could
do on his own. Not by a long shot.

And that brought Shepherd face to face with a
scary question. Where would Keur
get
manpower like that? Was
the FBI really
that
interested in him, or was Keur somebody
altogether different from who he claimed to be?

The more Shepherd mulled the matter over, the
more he decided he was letting Keur get to him. He was making way
too much out of a single hot cup of coffee. Keur could easily have
known he ran in the mornings and he could just as easily have found
out where he lived. Putting those two things together would almost
certainly have pointed him to Hong Kong Park. There really wasn’t
any other place in central Hong Kong where a runner
could
be. Yeah, Shepherd thought to himself as he stepped off the
escalator just below Hollywood Road, that was probably all there
was to it. What other sensible explanation could there be? Surely
he wasn’t important enough to command intensive surveillance in two
countries nearly half a world away from each other? Not from the
FBI, and not from anybody else.