World of Trouble (9786167611136) (27 page)

***

MAYBE SHEPHERD HAD caught a plane home to Hong Kong.
Or maybe he had caught a plane to wherever General Kitnarok was.
But Keur was almost certain he hadn’t done either.

Shepherd wasn’t a guy likely just to go home
and sit around sucking his thumb until somebody called him. On the
other hand, right now Keur was pretty sure Shepherd didn’t have any
better idea where General Kitnarok was than he did. Keur had
watched his face carefully when they talked about the general’s
abrupt disappearance, and he had looked carefully for any sign that
Shepherd was bullshitting him. He had seen none.

No, Shepherd didn’t know where Kitnarok was,
but he did have ways of finding out. He
would
find him. Keur
would make book on that. And he would lay even better odds that
trying
to find out was exactly what Shepherd was doing right
at that moment.

Shepherd had doubled back through the
airport, gotten in a cab, and checked into a hotel in Dubai. He had
probably taken a shower, wrapped himself in the fluffy bathrobe
that came with his expensive room, maybe ordered something from
room service, and now he was sitting back in a big chair with his
feet propped up on a coffee table making telephone calls. That was
what Keur would have done, and he didn’t have the slightest doubt
that was what Shepherd was doing.

That was why Keur was absolutely certain
Shepherd would call him within twenty-four hours. Once he found
General Kitnarok, what was he going to do? That was when Shepherd
would realize that he needed Keur’s help and that was when he would
call.

After that, he would be
in
. After
that, it would only be a matter of time.

But what if he was wrong? What if that
didn’t
happen?

Keur guessed then that he would just have to
start over. Maybe with Shepherd again, or maybe with someone else
altogether. Either way, he was going to get this done. He had
always accomplished what he set out to do and this time wasn’t
going to be any different. General Kitnarok wasn’t going to be the
first asshole to slip through his fingers. He just wasn’t going to
allow that to happen.

SHEPHERD’S FIRST CALLS were to the numbers where he
usually reached Charlie: his cell numbers and the private number at
the Palm Jumeirah compound. None of those numbers answered or were
even redirected to voice mail. They just rang until Shepherd got
bored listening to them and hung up.

Then he called the Kitnarok Foundation,
identified himself, and asked if Charlie was in the office.
Shepherd knew he wouldn’t be, of course, but he wanted to see what
they said. They didn’t say much. The woman fielding calls was
someone whose voice he didn’t recognize and she just said Charlie
wasn’t there and they didn’t expect him. Although Shepherd had
assumed the foundation would be a dead end, he was still
disappointed it was quite as dead an end as it turned out to
be.

Shifting tacks, he tried Kate’s private cell
number in Bangkok. Not surprisingly under the circumstances, his
call was diverted directly to voice mail. He hung up without
leaving a message. Then he tried calling Tommy. The result was the
same: voice mail. He hung up again without leaving a message.

Shepherd really wasn’t doing any worse than
he expected to do, but he was still a little frustrated. He had
been hoping to catch some kind of a lucky break.

Then with his next call, he did. Jello picked
up on the first ring.

“It sounds like you were sitting there just
waiting for me to call,” Shepherd said.

“When shit hits the fan, I’m always waiting
for you to call,” Jello said. “Where are you?”

“Dubai.”

“Figures.”

“I need a favor,” Shepherd said, getting
straight to the point.

“This is not a good time to ask for favors,
Jack. You may have heard we’re a little busy. Having a prime
minister murdered tends to make a real mess out of my day.”

“Yeah, well, imagine what it did to his.”

“What do you want, Jack?”

“This is a favor for you, too, man. But
you’re going to have to trust me on that. I can’t tell you why
right now, but this is connected with the matter that has your full
attention today.”

Jello didn’t say anything.

So Shepherd told him about white 737 with the
UAE tail number parked at Don Mueang. He didn’t tell him how he
knew about it, and he certainly didn’t tell him that Kate called
the plane Harvey. Bringing Kate’s name into the conversation would
have spun it off in directions he really didn’t want to go, and
telling Jello the airplane had been named after a six-foot rabbit
from a fifty-year-old movie would probably have caused him to hang
up.

“I need to know if that airplane is still
there,” Shepherd said. “And if it isn’t, I need to know when it
left and what kind of a flight plan they filed.”

Jello still didn’t say anything, but he
didn’t hang up either.

Shepherd could tell he was thinking it over.
“Yes or no?” he prodded. “I promise you that by tomorrow you’ll be
happy you did this for me.”

Jello made a sound on the other end of the
phone that Shepherd didn’t much like.

“Come on, man,” he pleaded, “trust me
here.”

There was a pause and then Jello sighed
heavily. Shepherd knew then that he had him.

“Where do you want me to call you?” Jello
asked.

“On my cell.”

“Give me fifteen minutes,” Jello said.

Then he hung up.

***

JELLO CALLED BACK in ten minutes.

“Your plane left this morning. It took off at
9:27
A.M.
”

“Exactly when was Somchai murdered?”

Jello was quiet for a moment as he thought
about why Jack was asking him that.

“A little after eight this morning,” he
answered slowly.

“Your shooters were on that plane.”

“Listen, Jack, whatever you know about
this—”

“What about the flight plan?”

“They filed for Dubai with a stop in
Phuket.”

“Dubai,” Shepherd muttered. “Fuck me dead.
When did you say they took off?”

“9:27
A.M.
”

Shepherd did the math in his head. An hour
and a quarter to Phuket, maybe a half hour to make a quick landing
and take off again, then a little over six hours to Dubai, give or
take. That would put the plane on the ground in Dubai around 5:30
P.M.
Bangkok time, which was 2:30
P.M.
Dubai time. He glanced at his watch.
It was 11:40
A.M.
The plane was still
three hours out.

Of course, flight plans got changed for all
kinds of reasons. Sometimes pilots even filed flight plans to one
destination and then re-filed them to another destination after
they were out of the departure airport’s control zone. Maybe the
plane wasn’t coming to Dubai at all.

Who was he kidding?

The CIA didn’t use Harvey for weekend jaunts
to Las Vegas, did they? Of course the plane was coming to Dubai.
Blossom Trading was in Dubai and everything that was happening was
somehow tied into Blossom Trading. Even if he wasn’t yet sure
exactly
how
.

“Did you check when the plane actually left
Phuket?”

“Yeah,” Jello said. “It didn’t.”

“You mean it’s still there?”

“No, I mean it never left because it never
arrived.”

“Then where did it go?”

“Beats me.”

Maybe Somchai’s killers had been onboard the
plane when it left Bangkok and maybe they hadn’t been. But they
most certainly wouldn’t be on it when it got to Dubai. The plane
had landed somewhere, probably at a private strip in the deep south
of Thailand. Filing a flight plan to Phuket would have taken it in
exactly the right direction for that. That would have been where
the shooters got off, but it didn’t really matter to Shepherd
where
the shooters got off. They were just hired guns and he
didn’t really give a damn about them.

What he
did
give a damn about was what
the plane was going to do after it offloaded the shooters, and his
guess was that the plane was coming to Dubai for another cargo of
weapons Those weapons would then be loaded onto it and it would fly
right back to Thailand. Maybe Charlie was even waiting at the
airport to get onboard himself and slip quietly back into Thailand
without anyone knowing about it.
Unlikely
, Shepherd thought,
but not impossible.

The ground in Thailand would never be more
fertile for Charlie to stage his triumphant return. All his
followers needed was some leadership and a little muscle, and the
whole country would be theirs for the taking. Charlie was the
leadership, of course, and the arms from Blossom Trading were the
muscle. He didn’t even want to think about where that left Kate and
a whole bunch of other decent and honorable people who thought
Thailand deserved better than another military dictatorship
sponsored by the CIA.

That 737 coming into Dubai was the key. It
was the key whether it was there to transport weapons, or Charlie,
or both. Shepherd hadn’t the slightest doubt about that.

Okay, so what the hell was he going to do
about it?

He had plenty of time to get to the airport
before the plane turned up since the airport was only about a half
hour’s drive from the Dusit Thani. But Dubai had an awfully big
airport and he had no idea where the 737 would be parked. Then,
even if he could find it, what was he going to do after that? Turn
himself into Bruce Willis, round up some wisecracking cops, seize
control of the airplane, and take it away from the CIA? Not
freaking likely. He was going to have to come up with a hell of a
lot better plan than
that
. Fortunately, he had an idea.

“I owe you, big guy,” he said to Jello.

“Goddamn it all, Jack, if you—”

Shepherd didn’t hear the rest of whatever
Jello was trying to say. He had already cut him off and was dialing
the number Keur had written on the back of his business card.

SINCE SHEPHERD AND Keur both knew where it was, they
met thirty minutes later at the Fat Burger in the Dubai Mall.
Shepherd ordered a chocolate shake, which he thought showed what a
cool guy he was. Keur ordered plain black coffee, which Shepherd
figured said more about Keur than he really wanted to know.

“Just out of curiosity,” Keur said, “did you
actually intend to go anywhere when you asked me to drop you off at
the airport this morning?”

Shepherd said nothing.

“You still don’t trust me, do you?” Keur
asked.

“No.”

“I didn’t think so.”

A smiling Filipina girl of indeterminate age
brought the shake and the coffee on a red plastic tray and they
bagged the snappy repartee until she was gone.

“What is this all about, Jack? Why are we
here?”

Shepherd took a slurp on his chocolate
milkshake and belched slightly.

“You’re going to love this,” he said.

Keur just sat and waited.

“I know what’s happening,” he continued.
“Well, some of it at least.”

Then Shepherd told Keur the truth, more or
less. As a member of the bar in good standing, telling the truth
was pretty much the last resort for him most of the time, and he
certainly didn’t want to get into the habit. But right at that
moment, it seemed the way to go.

“I need help,” he said. “And you’re all I’ve
got.”

“Help doing what?”

“Stopping Harvey and then finding
Charlie.”

“Who the fuck is Harvey?”

“An airplane.”

Keur looked at Shepherd carefully.

So Shepherd told him about the mirrored
building at Don Mueang Airport in Bangkok. He told him about the
737 with the UAE tail number. And he told him about the weapons
shipments into the rebel-held areas in the south of Thailand.

Keur was absolutely expressionless.

So Shepherd told him why the airplane was
called Harvey. He figured at least
that
would get a rise out
of Keur. He was right.

“You named this airplane after an invisible
white rabbit?” Keur asked.

Shepherd shrugged. “Not me.”

“Then who?”

He shrugged again, but he didn’t say
anything.

Keur sipped at his coffee. Put the cup down,
picked it up, and sipped some more.

“Where are you getting all this stuff?” he
finally asked.

“I can’t tell you that.”

“Then I can’t help you.”

Shepherd didn’t want to say anything about
Kate, of course, but it was starting to look like he had no choice.
He needed Keur’s help and he wasn’t going to get it without telling
him where his information was coming from. He could hardly blame
Keur for that. If their situations had been reversed, he would have
insisted on knowing, too.

So Shepherd told Keur about Kate. All in all,
he pretty much dropped his trousers for Keur.

“So this is really about a woman, is it?”

“Oh, crap,” Shepherd snapped. “Will you
listen to me, Keur? What I’m trying to tell you is—”

“So after all the moralizing bullshit you
gave me before,” he interrupted, “you’re willing to fuck over
General Kitnarok after all. And this is all because now he’s
squaring off against a woman you want to bang.”

“Maybe this is all just too hard for you to
understand.”

“Then
make
me understand.”

“Charlie Kitnarok is my friend as well as my
client. I’m not going to betray him to anyone.”

“But you just told me—”

“Kate is also my friend. I care about her. I
don’t want to see anything happen to her either.”

“You can’t bat for both sides, Jack. Make up
your fucking mind.”

“I
can
. I
am
on both sides. I’m
going to find a way to shut off the weapons shipments. No guns, no
civil war. Then Kate and Charlie can battle out the politics in
some way that doesn’t kill anybody, least of all either one of
them.”