World of Trouble (9786167611136) (39 page)

He glanced at his watch: 8:15
A.M.
It was a six-and-a-half hour flight to Thailand
from Dubai. That meant the plane would arrive in Thailand somewhere
around 2:00
P.M.
local time, depending on
whether they actually intended to land at Don Mueang or not. Just
because they filed a flight plan for Don Mueang didn’t mean the
plane was going there. And he would bet they weren’t. But wherever
the plane was going, one thing at least was now absolutely clear.
The clock had started.

He had less than six hours.

***

WHEN THEY GOT to Bangkok Bank, Keur flashed his badge
at the security desk in the lobby and they took the elevator
straight up to Tanit Chaiya’s office without being announced.
Shepherd liked their chances a lot better that way.

“Don’t laugh,” he told Keur in the elevator,
“but this guy looks just like Woody Allen.”

They brushed past Tanit’s secretary and
pushed straight into his office. Tanit half rose from his desk, his
heavy black glasses sagged to one side, and his mouth dropped
open.

Keur looked at Shepherd and laughed out loud.
“Goddamn,” he said, “the little shit really
does
look like
Woody Allen.”

They took the two chairs facing Tanit’s desk
without being asked to sit down. They didn’t say a word until Tanit
sat back down, too. Then Keur took out his badge wallet, flipped it
open, and held it up for Tanit to see.

“I am Special Agent Leonard Keur of the FBI,”
he announced in his best television voice. “I have some questions
for you.”

Shepherd thought Tanit looked less impressed
than he had expected him to be.

“You have no authority here,” Tanit said.

“Where’s the rest of the money?” Shepherd
asked, hoping to get Tanit’s full attention before the issue of
authority took over the conversation.

“What money are you—”

“Cut the shit,” Keur snapped. “A little over
six million dollars is missing from a series of wire transfers you
arranged on Mr. Shepherd’s instructions. If you tell us what you
did with it and where it is now, we’re out of your life and no one
else needs to know about this. If you don’t, I am personally going
to fuck you up, you worthless piece of crap.”

Tanit’s eyes opened wide and he looked at
Shepherd. Time for the good cop to take the stage.

“I know you didn’t take the money,
Tanit.”

Tanit quickly began shaking his head.

“But unless you tell us what happened to it,
I’m not going to be able to convince him,” Shepherd went on,
inclining his head toward Keur. “And he’s the one you have to
convince.”

Tanit licked his lips anxiously. “You must
understand that—”

“I must understand shit, you little turd,”
Keur snapped. “Where’s the fucking money?”

Being the bad cop looked to Shepherd like a
lot more fun than being the good cop. Especially the way Keur was
playing it. Either he was a whiz at method acting or he had a lot
of experience in the role.

“You have to understand,” Tanit said, his
eyes shifting to Shepherd, “that I…”

“You what?” Shepherd prompted.

“I was just following my instructions.”

“I gave you your instructions. I didn’t tell
you to—”

“Not my instructions from you,” Tanit said.
“My instructions from General Kitnarok.”

Shepherd glanced at Keur, who smiled.

“What were those instructions?” he asked.

“To send six million United States dollars
from the accounts to our Phuket branch before transferring the rest
according to your instructions.”

“Whose account did it go into?”

“No one’s. It was to be converted into cash.
Then we packed it into two suitcases and held it for
collection.”

“Who collected it?”

Tanit hesitated, his eyes flicking rapidly
back and forth from Keur to Shepherd.

“I don’t think—”

“Damn right you don’t think, you little
shit,” Keur exploded. “If you don’t tell me—”

Shepherd waved Keur into silence.

“Who was it, Tanit?”

Tanit sighed and looked away.

“It was the wife,” he said after a moment.
“It was General Kitnarok’s wife.”

“Sally Kitnarok?” Shepherd asked. “Are you
sure?”

“I am sure of nothing,” Tanit shrugged. “I
was told to send six million US dollars to our Phuket branch and
that General Kitnarok’s wife would collect the money in cash when
she wanted it.”

“US dollars?” Shepherd interrupted. “He
wanted the cash in US dollars?”

“No,” Tanit said. “He wanted the cash in Thai
baht.”

“Did Sally collect it? Personally?”

“So I am told.”

“Then Sally Kitnarok is in Phuket?”

“I have no idea where she is. I was informed
she appeared at our Phuket branch and collected the money. That is
all I know.”

“When did she collect it?”

“Two days ago.”

Tanit sighed heavily again and slumped in his
chair.

Shepherd sighed, too.

Phuket
, he thought to himself.
Fucking Phuket.

He should have known that, in the end, it
would all come down to fucking Phuket.

***

IT WAS MONTE Carlo that Somerset Maugham described as
a sunny place for shady people, but he could just as easily have
been talking about Phuket. An island resort off the southwest coast
of Thailand about five hundred miles to the south of Bangkok,
Phuket is set in the turquoise splendor of the Andaman Sea and
soaked by sunshine nearly year-round. It is a glamorous, alluring
vacation hideaway that has become justly famous among sailors,
golfers, scuba divers, and social glitterati all over the
world.

But Phuket has also attained a certain
measure of fame among quite a different group: international
criminals on the lam. The weather is good, the living is easy, the
food is terrific, and the women are… well, Thai. Best of all, if
the local police notice them at all, rascals on the run are
generally offered the option of making a modest contribution to the
local authorities to renew their invisibility. A lot of people
seemed to think of Thailand as not much more than an asylum for the
morally impaired anyway -- it’s the cuisine and the sex, the theory
goes -- so what better place could there be for a scoundrel to lie
low?

Every now and then a small piece would appear
in the
Bangkok Post
about a German bank robber or an
American con artist who had been discovered living quietly in
Phuket and bundled off home for trial. These intermittent
demonstrations of Thai cooperation with international law
enforcement were very impressive, and it was doubtless a
coincidence that they usually occurred just after the fugitive had
exhausted the booty from his misdemeanors. Regardless, the total
population of villains hiding out in Phuket never seemed to be
significantly diminished by an occasional extradition in the name
of international cooperation.

Speaking personally, Shepherd had a lousy
history with Phuket. A couple of years back a former law partner
from Washington had come to Shepherd and begged for his help. The
fellow had been framed for embezzling tens of millions of dollars
from a Philippine bank he thought he had been running but
eventually discovered was merely a front for a worldwide network of
crooks and criminals. He ended up hiding out in Phuket. Shepherd
followed him there and found the missing money for the fellow
easily enough. But it led to absolutely nothing good for either one
of them.

Then, a year or so after that, an immensely
wealthy and wildly infamous American who was on the lam from a
variety of charges in the US also took refuge in Phuket. His name
was Plato Karsarkis and the press dubbed him the world’s most
famous fugitive. It was clear that Karsarkis had crossed the wrong
people and the political smell from the charges against him was
unmistakable. Plato wanted a presidential pardon and he thought
Shepherd was just the man to get it for him. Reluctantly, Shepherd
took on the case, but before it was resolved that one turned sour
on him as well.

Two prominent clients in Phuket. Two
prominent clients who, it has to be said, ended up somewhat less
than fully satisfied with his services. Not a hell of a good track
record for Jack Shepherd where Phuket was concerned.

***

KEUR STAYED SILENT until they were well outside the
Bangkok Bank Building, but the minute they hit the sidewalk he
blurted out the one question he wanted Shepherd to answer.

“Does that mean General Kitnarok is in
Phuket, too?”

Shepherd thought about Sally and Charlie and
how he had always admired the closeness of their partnership.

“If Sally’s there, Charlie is, too.”

“Any idea where?”

Shepherd wanted to tell Keur that Phuket was
a big island and he had no idea at all where the Kitnaroks could
be. But he
did
know. He knew exactly where they were.

Charlie had bought a house in Phuket about a
year before. Of course, Charlie owned a lot of houses in a lot of
places, some of which he had probably even forgotten he owned,
which was why the significance of this particular house hadn’t
occurred to Shepherd before. The legal owner of the Phuket house
was a shell company in the British Virgin Islands. As far as
Shepherd knew, nobody realized the house actually belonged to
Charlie. Nobody, that is, except for him. He knew because he had
handled the purchase for Charlie and he had set up the British
Virgin Islands company that held the title.

It was an extraordinary house on a rise
overlooking the Andaman Sea just south of Nai Thon Beach, a
relatively isolated area on the northeast coast of the island only
a few minutes from Phuket International Airport. Charlie had never
spent a single night in the place as far as Shepherd knew, but
there was a staff there that kept it ready for his use at a
moment’s notice.

Shepherd knew a lot about that house because,
as it happened, he also knew the seller. That had made the
transaction easy for both sides, although it was not easy for him.
He had hoped he would never have to think about that damned house
again because it had belonged to his former client, Plato
Karsarkis, the guy who wanted Shepherd to use his influence in
Washington to score him a presidential pardon.

Now Charlie owned Plato’s former residence in
Phuket.

And Shepherd had not the slightest doubt that
Charlie was there right then.

Charlie was there. Sally was there. Six
million dollars in cash converted into Thai baht was there. And
within the next four hours, Shepherd would bet a white 737 would be
unloading a cargo of arms and ammunition about ten minutes from
there.

It all added up. He just didn’t like what it
added up
to
.

“Come on, Jack,” Keur prompted. “We don’t
have time for all this. Do you know where General Kitnarok is or
don’t you?”

Shepherd took a deep breath and let it out
again.

“Yeah,” he nodded. “I know where he is.”

SHEPHERD DIALED THE number of the Nokia he had given
Kate.

“The plane is going to Phuket,” Shepherd said
when she answered. “That’s where they’re unloading the
weapons.”

“How do you know?”

“Trust me. I know. They’re going to
Phuket.”

He hoped to Christ he was right.

“Okay,” Kate said. “We’ll let them land and
then take the plane and whoever is meeting it there on the
ground.”

Shepherd said nothing.

Kate read his silence correctly. “You think
General Kitnarok is in Phuket, too, don’t you? You think he’ll be
there to meet the plane.”

Shepherd hesitated. The whole idea had been
to keep Charlie and Kate from destroying each other, not to feed
Charlie to his enemies.

“I just want to talk to him, Jack. If General
Kitnarok and I can talk, maybe we can stop all this from
happening.”

“There are people on your side who probably
have other ideas, Kate. I don’t feel good about setting Charlie up
for them.”

“You have my word that nothing will happen to
him.”

Shepherd trusted Kate, of course, but he
wasn’t sure she was making a promise she could keep. He ought to be
there with Charlie. Then he could be
sure
she kept it.

That was a problem, of course. By the time he
made it out to the airport, got himself on a flight to Phuket, and
landed at the airport there, everything would probably be over.
Harvey would already be on the ground and Kate’s people would have
the cargo under their control. If Charlie was there, too, they
would have him as well.

But maybe Charlie wouldn’t be there. Maybe he
would keep his distance from the shipment. If he did, what would he
do when he found out Kate had seized the guns? According to Kate,
there was a shipment of guns already in the country and nobody knew
where it was. Did Charlie know? Would he decide that was all he was
going to get, that the yellow shirts were getting too close, and
push the button? Would Kate grabbing the new shipment cause him to
turn the red shirts loose to do their worst?

Shepherd knew he had to get to Charlie before
Kate’s people took Harvey down. He had to be there before Charlie
even started thinking about pushing that button.

“Can you get me a helicopter?” he asked.
“Something fast.”

When Plato Karsarkis built a pair of tennis
courts alongside his house in Phuket, some people wondered why he
needed two courts. But Shepherd knew. They had been re-enforced to
double as a landing pad for helicopters. The tennis courts hadn’t
actually been used for that purpose very often, almost certainly
not at all since Charlie had owned the property, but surely they
were still there. Charlie didn’t play tennis, but he would have had
no reason to rip out the courts either.