World of Trouble (9786167611136) (35 page)

Somewhere between stuffing into his bag what
little clean underwear he had left and collecting his toilet gear
in the bathroom, it occurred to Shepherd what was bothering him
about the picture of Keur sitting in front of the desk with his
bags at his feet. It was the briefcase. Keur hadn’t had a briefcase
when they checked into the Grand.

“Where’d that come from?” Shepherd asked,
pointing to it.

“I asked the embassy to send some stuff over.
That’s what it came in.”

“Research material?”

“Not exactly.”

Shepherd nodded and thought that over.

“So it’s not just Jello,” he said. “The
American embassy knows where we are, too.”

“They know where
I
am. I didn’t tell
them anything about you.”

“What’s in the briefcase?”

“You don’t trust me, Jack?”

Shepherd said nothing.

A half smile spread over Keur’s face as he
stood up and tossed his briefcase on the bed. He popped the clasps
and lifted the top. Shepherd could see what was in it from where he
stood. There was a black handgun in a leather holster. There was
also a small short-barreled revolver that was silver plated and
looked like a Smith & Wesson detective special.

“One for you and one for me?” Shepherd
asked.

“Not really,” Keur said. “They’re both for
me.”

“Why do you need two guns?”

“I don’t like walking around naked,” Keur
said.

“You didn’t seem to have a problem with that
in Dubai.”

“I felt safe there.”

Shepherd chewed his lip while he contemplated
the handguns in Keur’s briefcase.

“Is that a Glock?”

“No, a SIG-Sauer 9mm.”

“I thought you Bureau guys all carried Glock
.40s now.”

Keur closed the briefcase and took it back to
the chair at the desk. He placed it next to the wheeled airline bag
and sat down.

“When did you become such an expert on law
enforcement handguns, Jack?”

“It’s just something I remember from
somewhere. I’ve got a few friends at the Bureau.”

“Well, here’s your chance to update your
knowledge. We have a choice of standard sidearm. Either the Glock
or the SIG. Maybe I’m just an old fashioned guy, but I like the
SIG.”

“What’s the little revolver for?”

“Sometimes a SIG is hard to conceal and you
need something a bit smaller.”

“The Bureau gives this kind of stuff out to
agents who’re on medical leave, does it?”

“You sound suspicious, Jack.”

“Just a little curious. A guy insists I move
out of my hotel, wants to take me to some apartment he suddenly
came up with from somewhere, and then shows up with a bag full of
guns. Wouldn’t that make
you
curious?”

“If Adnan had an armed FBI agent with him, he
might still be walking around today.”

“Where’d the guns really come from?”

“The embassy sent them over, Jack. Just like
I told you. You’re not the only one who has friends.”

“You talked to Pete Logan? He sent them to
you?”

“No,” Keur said.

“I thought Pete was the only Bureau guy—”

“Logan isn’t my contact here.”

“I don’t understand.”

“You don’t really need to, Jack. Now, are you
going to pack your fucking bag so we can get out of here? Or do I
have to do it for you?”

Shepherd looked at Keur and thought about
that for a moment or two. Keur had his own agenda here. He
understood that. But how did this safe house and the two guns fit
into that agenda? It looked like Keur was preparing himself to take
somebody down, if he got the chance, and that somebody was
obviously Robert Darling. Maybe Keur had information that Darling
was in Thailand and he didn’t want to share it. Maybe he didn’t
want to share it in order to make certain that information didn’t
get back to Pete Logan and the Bureau. Was this really some kind of
a private vendetta Keur was playing out? Was he hunting Darling for
some reason other than what he had told Shepherd?

If Keur
was
stalking Darling for some
other reason, he sure as hell wasn’t going to admit it just because
Shepherd asked him to. And Shepherd knew he would still needed
Keur’s help to find Charlie. He didn’t see how he could pull that
off completely on his own. So he needed to keep Keur sweet. Let a
few more cards come down on the table. Watch and wait. Stay
loose.

Shepherd was good at that. Staying loose. He
had been so loose for the last year he was damn near completely
untethered. He shrugged, dropped the subject, and finished
packing.

JUST UNDER AN hour later, Shepherd and Keur were in
an apartment high up in a large building on Soi Thonglor, a
pleasant thoroughfare on the far eastern side of Bangkok. The
apartment was large and expensively decorated. If this was a Bureau
safe house, Shepherd figured the Bureau’s safe house budget ought
to be investigated by somebody.

The living room was at least forty feet long.
It was anchored by a grand piano at one end and floor-to-ceiling
bookshelves at the other. Both the east and west walls were broken
by a succession of big windows through which Shepherd could see the
office towers of the city in one direction and the distant glimmer
of the Chao Phraya River in the other.

They sat facing each other on two sofas
upholstered in rich damask patterned linen. Between them was a
six-foot long square coffee table that was dotted with stacks of
art books.

“Nice apartment,” Shepherd said. “When does
the butler come in?”

Keur said nothing.

“As much as I appreciate the hospitality, I’m
not going to accomplish anything hiding out here,” Shepherd went
on.

“You’re not going to accomplish anything by
getting yourself arrested either.”

“My guess is somebody doesn’t want me find
Charlie and that’s why the arrest order was issued. They’re trying
to keep me pinned down. I’ve got to get that order lifted.”

“How are you going to do that?”

“The first step is to find out where the
arrest order came. So I’m going to call Liz and ask her.”

Shepherd swung his feet up onto the coffee
table and pulled out his phone. But before he could dial, Keur
leaped off the other sofa like he had been stabbed in the ass and
wrapped his hand around it.

“What the
fuck
you doing?” he
snapped.

“What does it look like I’m doing? I’m
calling Liz to ask her where she got that story. We’re old friends.
I’m sure she’ll tell me.”

Actually, Shepherd wasn’t at all sure she
would
tell him. But he had always believed that sounding
confident was more than half the battle, particularly when he
actually didn’t have a clue what the hell was coming next.

Keur just stared at Shepherd for a moment,
then put the phone on the table sat back down.

“Oh, give me a break,” Shepherd said. “You’re
not saying somebody’s listening to my cell phone, are you?”

“Probably not. Cell phone signals are hard to
isolate unless they already know roughly where you are.”

“And nobody but you knows where I am right
now.”

“Right,” Keur nodded. “On the other hand,
I’ll bet a lot of people know where the
Times
chick is right
now.”

Shepherd hadn’t thought of that, but he
wasn’t about to admit it to Keur. Instead, he arranged his features
in a look of bored disinterest and waited.

“I’ll be back in a few minutes,” Keur said.
“You want something to eat?”

“Where are you going?”

“McDonald’s. There’s one next door.”

McDonald’s didn’t do much for Shepherd, but
he hadn’t had eaten anything since he got up and all of a sudden he
realized how hungry he was.

“Bring me some of whatever you’re having,” he
said.

He had always held the view that it didn’t
matter what you ordered at McDonald’s. Everything they sold tasted
more or less the same anyway.

***

WHEN KEUR WALKED back into the apartment a half hour
later, he handed Shepherd two paper bags. One of them contained a
Big Mac, a large fries, and an apple pie. The other contained five
identical Nokia cell phones, the cheap ones without any of the
bells and whistles, and five chargers.

“All prepaid and untraceable,” Keur said.
“Bought them down the street and loaded each one with five hours of
air time. One’s for you, one’s for me. The batteries are
pre-charged so we should be good to go.”

“Who are the other three for?”

“For whoever you want to talk to. When you
use prepaid numbers for both ends of a conversation, you stay
anonymous. At least you do for a while.”

“You seem to know quite a lot about this kind
of thing, Keur.”

Keur didn’t say anything. He just handed
Shepherd a card on which the shop had written the numbers for the
five phones.

Shepherd took the card and turned on three of
the phones. After the numbers came up on their screens, he wrote
his name by one of the numbers on the card and dropped the phone
into his pocket. Then he wrote Keur’s name next to another number
and handed that phone to him.

Shepherd held up the third phone.

“I need to get this to Liz,” he said.

“Do you know where her office is?”

“Yes. Not far.”

“Give me the address and I’ll go downstairs
and hire a motorcycle taxi to deliver it.”

Shepherd rummaged in a desk drawer until he
found a large envelope. He wrote Liz’s address on it, sealed the
telephone inside, and gave it to Keur. While Keur took the envelope
downstairs, Shepherd turned the television on to pass the time. CNN
was running World Sport again. Did they ever broadcast anything
else? He muted the sound and sat staring at interminable and
interchangeable images of people playing soccer until Keur came
back.

“Ten minutes,” Keur said. He glanced at the
television set. “I didn’t know you liked soccer.”

“I don’t. I loath soccer.”

“Me, too,” Keur said. Then he sat down on the
couch across from Shepherd and focused his attention on the
television set.

Fifteen minutes later, World Sport was still
broadcasting excerpts from European soccer games and Shepherd and
Keur were still staring at the muted television set in silence.
How many soccer games could be played on the planet every
day?
Shepherd wondered to himself. But he quickly decided any
number greater than one was way too many and lost all interest in
trying to work it out.

Shepherd picked up the new Nokia, consulted
his list of numbers, and dialed the one for the phone Keur had sent
to Liz’s office by motorcycle taxi. No answer.

Five more minutes of silent soccer and he
tried again. Still no answer.

“Maybe your delivery guy hasn’t made it yet,”
he said to Keur.

“Maybe your pet reporter’s not in her
office.”

Shepherd shrugged and put the Nokia down on
the coffee table. Almost immediately it began to play some kind of
irritating jingle. He jerked it back up again and answered.

“Who the fuck is this?” a woman’s voice
bawled in his ear. “And what the fuck is going on?”

“It’s Liz,” he said to Keur.

“Jack?” Liz’s voice dropped to a stage
whisper on the telephone. “Is that you, Jack?”

“Yes. It’s me.”

“Did you send me this phone?”

“Yes.”

“And you just called me on it? Twice?”

“Yes.”

“What is this number you called me from?”

“It’s my temporary phone. Just like the phone
you’re talking on now is
your
temporary phone.”

There was a little silence while Liz took
that in.

“Where are you?” she asked.

“Close.”

“Close? You mean you’re in Bangkok?”

“Never mind about that now, Liz. I heard your
report. Why are they looking for me?”

“You don’t know?”

“I wouldn’t be asking you if I knew.”

“The government thinks you’re General
Kitnarok’s man and that he’s about to start a civil war here. They
figure you’ve got something to do with that. Maybe you’re even
pulling some of the strings.”

“I don’t do politics, Liz. I thought you knew
that.”

“This government isn’t going to let General
Kitnarok take them down. They’re going to fight. They think you’re
involved, Jack, and they’re coming after you.”

“You mean coming after me the way somebody
came after Adnan?”

“What are you talking about? Who the fuck is
Adnan?”

It suddenly occurred to Shepherd that Liz
didn’t know anything about Adnan’s headless corpse dangling under
the Taksin Bridge. The military must have hushed it up pretty
effectively if the press hadn’t sniffed out anything about it. That
was interesting. If the military had been involved in killing Adnan
to scare Charlie’s supporters, why would they keep it quiet?

“Why did you send this phone to me?” Liz
interrupted Shepherd’s reverie before he could decide what to make
of that.

“Because it’s untraceable.”

There was another silence and this time he
could almost hear Liz thinking.

“Are you telling me my calls are being
monitored?”

“Maybe. We think it’s possible.”

“We?”

“Later,” Shepherd said, glancing at Keur.
“What the hell is going on, Liz? That’s what matters right now.
Who’s looking for me?”

“I’m not actually quite sure. The police, I
guess.”

“I talked to Jello not more than an hour ago.
He didn’t know anything about it.”

“If you say so.”

“It was your story, Liz. You even had a photo
of me. Where did you get it?”

“We got the picture off the internet. We went
to the site for—”

“Not the goddamned picture, Liz. I meant the
story that the Thai authorities are looking for me. Where did you
get the story from?”

“You know I can’t tell you what my
source—”