World of Trouble (9786167611136) (42 page)

“I have no idea about that either.”

“I don’t believe you, Charlie.”

Charlie chewed on his cigar.

Fifteen seconds went by.

Then thirty.

“Okay,” he finally said, “I don’t know what
actually happened to Adnan. I just know what
didn’t
happen.
Somebody killed him and then beheaded him to make it look like the
Muslims did it, but I know it wasn’t them. I’ve got a lot of
friends down south. There are some good men there and they tell me
the Muslim separatists had nothing to do with killing Adnan. I
believe them. I just don’t know who did it.”

“So when I talked to you and told you Adnan
was dead—”

“I thought it might be somebody trying to get
to me through the people around me. That’s why I insisted you come
back to Dubai. I thought you might be next.”

From somewhere outside, Shepherd heard what
sounded like several car doors slam. Then an engine started, ran
roughly for a moment or two, and caught. The vehicle drove away and
Shepherd listened until the sound of its engine died away in the
distance. He looked at Charlie.

“Some of my people are here,” Charlie said.
“They’re organizing the demonstrations. We want to keep tight
control. Make sure nothing gets out of hand.”

“So why are you bringing in arms for your
people?”

“I’m not bringing in
anything
. I swear
to God, Jack, I’m not. Somebody has been feeding you a load of
crap.”

“Did Sally tell you who came here with me
today?”

“Yeah. Kate, her bodyguards, and some other
white guy.”

“That white guy is an FBI agent named Keur.
He’s been investigating Robert Darling and Blossom Trading.”

“The FBI?” The look on Charlie’s face was one
of complete incomprehension. “Why would the FBI care about either
one of them?”

“Because Blossom Trading is running guns to
Iran as well as Thailand. Darling is an American citizen. When an
American citizen is involved in illegal arms dealing, it gets the
FBI’s attention.”

“Come off it, Jack. Blossom Trading is just a
crappy little company that sells washing machines and automobile
tires. It’s not an arms dealer, for God’s sake. If there were any
guns around there, somebody would just end up shooting themselves
in the ass.”

“Charlie, we’re getting nowhere here. Keur
knows all about Blossom Trading. He knows all about Darling. He
even knows that the CIA has been running a delivery service for
you. For God’s sake, I saw the plane myself. First in Bangkok, then
in Dubai. I even saw Darling and Tommy walk off it.”

“Who’s Tommy?”

“Tommerat something-or-another. He
works—”

“That guy at NIA?”

Shepherd nodded. “He and Darling are both
Agency.”

“Robert doesn’t have anything to do with the
CIA,” Charlie said. “That’s stupid.”

“Talk to Keur yourself if you don’t believe
me. He’s right downstairs.”

Charlie sat looking out the window for a long
time after that, smoking his cigar, saying nothing. Eventually he
took a last puff and dumped the remains in the ashtray.

“Okay, get him up here,” he said.

“Don’t you think it would be better to talk
to Kate first about—”

“I want to talk to this FBI guy. What’s his
name?”

“Keur.”

“Yeah, okay. Keur. Get him up here.”

So Shepherd nodded and went downstairs to get
Special Agent Leonard Keur of the FBI.

***

HE WAS DISAPPOINTED he hadn’t been able to convince
Charlie that the jig was up. He really thought he could do it. He
had hoped Charlie thought enough of him to come clean when he laid
out what they already knew. Apparently Charlie didn’t.

Shepherd was happy to hand the ball to Keur
and let him take a crack at convincing Charlie it was all over.
Maybe his bad cop would get the job done where Shepherd’s good cop
had fallen flat on its face.

And, if Keur
could
convince Charlie
that the jig was up, maybe they would still have a chance to stop
this thing.

WHEN SHEPHERD RETURNED to the study, Keur was with
him. Charlie had moved to a big table at the opposite end of the
room and was sitting behind it with his arms folded over his chest.
The table was long and narrow and made of rough, dark-stained
planks. It looked like an expensive French country antique and
probably was.

Shepherd and Keur sat opposite each other on
two cream-colored leather love seats positioned perpendicular to
Charlie’s table. They had to twist to the side in order to make eye
contact with Charlie while Charlie lounged in a high-backed chair
looking straight ahead at both of them. It was an uncomfortable way
for a visitor to have to sit, but Shepherd gathered that was
probably the whole idea.

“This is Special Agent Leonard Keur of the
FBI,” Shepherd said. “If you don’t want to listen to me, listen to
him.”

Charlie studied Keur expressionlessly. Keur
looked right back at him and said nothing.

“So, Mr. FBI man,” Charlie said when he had
lost interest in sizing Keur up, “what’s all this shit you’ve been
telling Jack?”

“That doesn’t matter anymore,” Keur said.

“It sure as hell matters to
me
.”

“I’m here with a message for you, General.
That’s the only thing that’s important now.”

Charlie obviously had no idea what Keur was
talking about. Shepherd knew how he felt.

“Look, Keur,” Shepherd said, “I don’t know
what this—”

“A message from who?” Charlie
interrupted.

“It’s time for a word from your sponsor,
General.”

Charlie’s head rocked back as if Keur had
slapped him. Shepherd looked from Charlie to Keur and then back
again, but he still couldn’t work out what was going on.

“Who the fuck
are
you?” Charlie
snapped.

“I’m with the Central Intelligence Agency,”
Keur said.

Oh shit,
Shepherd thought.
Shit,
shit, shit.

“I had no idea, Charlie,” Shepherd said. “He
said he was FBI and I confirmed it with the Bureau guy in Bangkok.
He checked out. He really did.”

Charlie just grunted.

“Ah crap,” Shepherd muttered. “Maybe I should
have—”

“Don’t blame yourself, Jack,” Keur
interrupted. “My ID is fully backstopped. No matter who you called,
they’d just confirm what I told you.”

“I don’t get it,” Shepherd said. “Why did you
go to so much trouble to—”

“Forget it, Jack,” Charlie interrupted.

Shepherd glanced over at Charlie. He was
leaning forward on his forearms, watching Keur intently.

“Whoever the fuck you really are, CIA errand
boy, what’s this message you say you have for me?”

“The message is this, General. The party’s
over. I’m here to pack up the tents and tell the band to go
home.”

“What party?” Shepherd asked, looking back
and forth from Keur to Charlie.

“Your pal here hasn’t exactly told you the
whole story, Jack,” Keur said. “You see, General Kitnarok is our
man in these parts.”

Shepherd looked at Charlie. “You’re working
for the CIA?”

Charlie didn’t meet his eyes.

“I asked you a question, Charlie, and I think
I’m entitled to an answer.”

Charlie cleared his throat and stared down at
his hands. “We’re more like partners.”

“Burma, Laos, and Cambodia are basket cases,
so Thailand’s all we’ve got to block China’s expansion through
Southeast Asia,” Keur said. “We needed a friendly, reliable
government in Thailand and the general here seemed to be the right
horse to ride. So we backed him.”

Shepherd was still looking at Charlie. “Then
you knew all along that Darling and Tommy were Agency,” he
said.

Charlie said nothing, but his chair squeaked
as he shifted his weight.

“No,” Keur answered for him, “he didn’t know.
We used people we already had in place to make sure everything
played the way we wanted it to. We thought a civil war in Thailand
would burn China’s supporters here for quite some time, so Darling
and Tommy were supposed to see that both the red shirts and the
Muslims got what they needed to turn up the heat.”

“You mean guns.”

“Light arms, ammunition, explosives,” Keur
shrugged. “Just enough to stir things up. We weren’t exactly going
to share nuclear technology with a bunch of fucking farmers,
Jack.”

“And what was Charlie’s part in that?”

“None. He had no part. He just didn’t have
the stomach for it. Which, I have to tell you, worried us a bit.
That’s why I cozied up to you, Jack. We were starting to think our
boy here didn’t have the balls he needed and we had to make sure he
didn’t go completely tits up on us. I figured sticking close to you
was a good way to stick close to him.”

Shepherd shifted his eyes back to Charlie.
“What the
fuck
were you thinking?”

“I was thinking you take you friends where
you can find them, Jack. That’s what I was thinking.”

“We figured that when Somchai was out of the
way—” Keur began.

“The CIA killed Somchai?” Shepherd
interrupted.

“Of course not, Jack,” Keur chuckled.
“Haven’t you heard? The Agency doesn’t go in for that sort of thing
anymore.”

“But I’ll bet you still do stunts,” Shepherd
said. “Fake assassinations? Stuff like that?”

Keur’s mouth stretched into something that
may or may not have been a smile.

“Charlie told me Adnan arranged the Dubai
thing.”

Keur said nothing.

“But it wasn’t Adnan, was it? It was the
Agency.”

“Charlie thought that a bit of a show in
Dubai would make him look good. We figured it was a dumb idea, but
what the hell? It was no big deal.”

“Maybe not for you. But it was a pretty big
deal for the two dead shooters and the CNN producer who took a
bullet in the chest.”

“Accidents happen,” Keur shrugged.

“The producer may have been an accident, but
my guess is you killed the two shooters to keep them from telling
anybody that the assassination was a fake staged by the CIA to get
publicity for Charlie.”

“You don’t really think those guys had any
idea the Agency was involved, do you?” Keur smiled again and shook
his head. “Sometimes we just fuck up, Jack. I hate to admit it, but
that’s the truth of it.”

“I’ve come too far to walk away,” Charlie
said, pushing himself to his feet. “Why are you doing this?”

“Jack and his girlfriend have gotten too
close. They’ve figured out too much. It looks like our little
project is going to turn to shit and we don’t want to be
embarrassed by all this.”

“I’d think you’d be used to being embarrassed
by now,” Charlie snapped. “You’ve sure as hell had plenty of
practice.”

“We’ve decided it’s better to cut our losses
and move on,” Keur said, speaking to Shepherd as if Charlie wasn’t
even in the room. “We’re washing our hands of the general.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means we’re cutting off the general’s
support. This is the end of the money, the intelligence, the
influence, the arms supplies, everything.”

“I didn’t ask you for any money,” Charlie
said. “And I damn well didn’t ask you for any weapons.”

“No, that’s right, you didn’t. That part was
our idea. We thought this might work better if we stirred the pot a
little more vigorously than you had the balls to.”

Charlie pushed himself away from the table
and walked over to the windows. He stared silently out into the
compound while Shepherd stayed where he was and tried to get his
mind around what he was hearing. Keur sat quietly and said nothing
at all.

“Then I guess I’m on my own now,” Charlie
said after a while.

Keur shook his head. “You’re not hearing me,
General. It’s all over. We’ve changed our mind. It’s as simple as
that. We’re willing to take our chances with the government
Thailand has now. It’s time for you to go back to Dubai and play
golf.”

“I don’t answer to you,” Charlie snapped.

“Actually,” Keur smiled, “you do. We say this
is over. So it’s over.”

“You don’t want me for an enemy,” Charlie
said. “I can do a lot of damage. I know a lot. Don’t treat me like
some Third World yokel you can send back to the farm when you’re
tired of him.”

“Look, General,” Keur said, “you’re right
about one thing. We
don’t
want you for an enemy. We just
want you to walk away. Tell me what you need from us to do that and
I’ll make it happen.”

“I’m not walking away,” Charlie snapped. “I
intend to lead Thailand again. I’ll do it with or without your
help.”

Keur shook his head again and sighed heavily.
He pushed himself up and walked over to the windows where Charlie
was staring down into the compound. He laid one hand gently on
Charlie’s shoulder.

“Is there
anything
I can do to make
this right?” he asked. “Anything I can say to convince you not to
fight us on this?”

“You can fulfill your commitment and support
me until I’m Prime Minister of Thailand again.”

“That’s not going to happen.”

“Then I guess there isn’t anything you can
do. We will be enemies, Mr. CIA errand boy. And there is nothing
you can do about it.”

“I can think of one thing,” Keur said.

***

LATER, EVERY TIME Shepherd thought back on what
happened after that, he felt as if he were watching a movie from
which big chunks had been snipped out. There was so much he
couldn’t remember at all.

For instance, he couldn’t remember seeing
Keur draw the gun.

One minute Keur was standing at the windows
next to Charlie, one hand resting familiarly on Charlie’s shoulder.
The next minute he had a tiny silver revolver in his left hand.

And the muzzle was pressed against Charlie’s
temple.