World of Trouble (9786167611136) (8 page)

“Let me make certain I understand exactly
what you mean,” Shepherd said when the sharks had passed. “Are you
asking me to
spy
on Charlie for you?”

“Well, not exactly spy on him. More like…
well, like—”

“You’re asking me to spy on Charlie for
you.”

“Yeah,” Keur sighed. “When you cut through
all the bullshit, I guess that about sums it up.”

“Why would it ever cross your mind I might do
something like that?”

“I talked to some people in Washington. A lot
of people remember you. They thought you might be my guy.”

“You’re saying you asked around Washington
and everyone told you I’d make a dandy snitch?”

“No, people told me you’re discreet. And that
you care about what’s right.”

“Yes, I am, and yes I do. So let me just say
one thing to you, Agent Keur. Go to hell. We’re all done here.”

“Slow down, Jack. I think maybe we’ve gotten
off on the wrong foot.”

“We don’t require any feet. We’re not going
anywhere together.”

“Has anyone ever told you that your
wisecracks get old fast?”

“Frequently. And yet I persist. Isn’t that
amazing?”

They passed the end of the aquarium and took
an escalator up to the next level. They walked through another huge
atrium, this one with a full-size ice hockey rink at the bottom,
and passed a Starbucks with ranks of sofas and easy chairs facing
into the atrium.

“I’m asking nicely for your help, Jack.
Please just hear me out. I’ll put all my cards on the table. I’ll
tell you everything.”

Shepherd said nothing.

“Okay, here’s the truth of the matter,” Keur
said. “The target of our investigation isn’t General Kitnarok. It’s
Robert Darling.”

Shepherd glanced at Keur, but he said
nothing.

“Surprised?”

He was and he wasn’t, but he didn’t see any
need to tell Keur that.

“Why are you investigating Darling?” Shepherd
asked instead.

“Darling is a trustee of the Kitnarok
Foundation,” Keur said.

“Yes, and I am, too. So what?”

“And Darling is also a director of Blossom
Trading.”

Shepherd shrugged.

“Do you know what Blossom Trading does?”

“I assume it trades.”

“Do you know
what
it trades, and with
whom?”

“No idea.”

“You never asked anybody?”

“I never had any reason to ask anybody. I’ve
got nothing to do with Blossom Trading.”

“Sure you do. You’ve been there at least a
half dozen times that I know of.”

That caught Shepherd off guard as he gathered
Keur must have intended. He stopped walking and stood for a moment
examining the titles in the window of a huge bookstore named
Kinokuniya. What was an English-language bookstore with a Japanese
name doing in a Middle Eastern country? Shepherd couldn’t even
begin to imagine.

“Is the FBI following me, Keur?”

“Don’t be ridiculous, Jack. You’re not nearly
that important.”

“Then why do you think I’ve ever been to
Blossom Trading?”

“Come on, Jack. We’re the FBI. We’re not
completely stupid.”

“You could have fooled me.”

Keur mimed a laugh, but he didn’t say
anything.

“I’ve never been to Blossom Trading,”
Shepherd said. “The Kitnarok Foundation has its offices at the same
address as Blossom Trading so I’ve been in the building, but that’s
it. Are you people watching that building for some reason?”

Keur ignored the question. “I assume you know
General Kitnarok owns part of Blossom Trading,” he said
instead.

“Of course, I do. Charlie owns a lot of
companies I have nothing to do with.”

“You want me to tell you what Blossom Trading
does?” Keur asked me.

“Is there any way for me to stop you?”

“Blossom Trading trades with Iran. Iran buys
arms through them to evade the arms embargo.”

Shepherd suddenly wished he
had
thought of a way to stop Keur.

“You’re telling me Charlie is running guns to
Iran?”

“Blossom Trading is running guns to Iran.
We’re not sure how deeply General Kitnarok is involved. That’s what
we need your help to find out.”

“But you think Darling is involved.”

“Darling is an American citizen and a
director of Blossom Trading. If he were involved in a violations of
the arms embargo on Iran, the FBI would be interested.” Keur spread
his hands, palms up. “Draw your own conclusions.”

Shepherd nodded and thought that over.

“You’ve met with Darling several times
recently, haven’t you?” Keur asked.

Shepherd nodded again.

“What did you talk about?”

“Nothing in particular.”

“I find that hard to believe, Jack.”

“Why?”

“Talking about nothing in particular just
doesn’t sound like you.”

“Wait a minute. Are you saying you think
I’m
involved in selling arms to Iran?”

“Are you?”

“You can’t be serious, Keur.”

“Then just put me in the picture here. What
did you and Darling talk about?”

“I already told you. I barely know Darling.
We sit in trustee meetings together. I bump into him occasionally.
That’s it.”

Keur didn’t look to Shepherd like he believed
him and suddenly Shepherd went from feeling mildly irritated to
completely pissed off.

“I can’t believe this shit, Keur. Do you
honestly think that I’m going to rattle off a report of
conversations I’ve had with Darling just because you suddenly drop
out of the sky, tell me he’s an arms smuggler, and ask me what
we’ve been talking about?”

“Let’s not quarrel, Jack.”

“Why not? You’re no fun when you’re all
serious. Actually, come to think of it, I’ll bet you’re no fun
under any circumstances.”

They walked into the bookstore with the
Japanese name that was so big Shepherd couldn’t even see the other
end of it. As they slowly strolled the aisles, he wondered how the
place stayed in business. He had never seen a single person in
Dubai reading a book.

“I need to know if General Kitnarok is
involved in Blossom Trading’s arms deals, Jack. The only way I can
find out for sure is through you.”

“Then I’d say you’re pretty well screwed. Got
a Plan B?”

“Think about it. It’s to your advantage as
well as General Kitnarok’s.”

“You can say anything you want, Keur, but I’m
not spying on my client for the FBI.”

Abruptly, Keur changed the subject. “You
handled yourself well out there yesterday, Jack. Cool as a
cucumber, you were. Both shooters dead and you and General Kitnarok
walk away without a scratch.”

“We were lucky. The CNN woman wasn’t.”

“From where I sat, luck had nothing to do
with it.”

“And where were you sitting?”

“In front of a TV set watching CNN like
everybody else. What did you think I meant?”

“I thought you meant you were there.”

Keur snorted, a sound Shepherd could have
lived a long time without hearing. “You think the FBI tried to kill
General Kitnarok yesterday?”

“I don’t know who it was. Do you?”

“It wasn’t us.”

“But you know who it was, don’t you?”

“No idea. None at all.”

Shepherd looked at Keur. He decided he didn’t
believe him.

“Anyway, forget all that, Jack. Here’s what
you really need to know about yesterday. We don’t think it was a
genuine attempt to kill General Kitnarok.”

“No?” Shepherd said. “Well, darn, it sure
looked genuine to me, and I had a hell of a lot better view of it
than you did.”

“That’s not what I meant. It was a real hit
all right. But killing General Kitnarok wasn’t the objective.”

Shepherd must have look puzzled, which would
have been easy enough since he had no idea at all what Keur was
talking about.

“You don’t see where I going with this, do
you, Jack?”

Shepherd said nothing.

“Killing General Kitnarok would have served
no purpose,” Keur said. “Quite on the contrary, it would have
turned him into a martyr, which would have hurt his political
opponents, not helped them.”

“You’re telling me those guys weren’t trying
to kill Charlie?”

“No, they were trying to disrupt his comeback
by crippling his financial resources.”

“I don’t understand. How would an attack on
Charlie cripple his financial resources?”

“It wouldn’t. That’s what I’m telling you.
General Kitnarok wasn’t the target of the attack.”

Keur’s face took on an expression that was
almost but not quite a smile.

“You were, Jack. They were trying to kill
you
.”

Shepherd stopped walking and stood and stared
at Keur.

“Be careful, Jack. Stay cool and keep your
head down. I’ll be in touch.”

Keur turned and walked away. He left the
bookstore and was almost immediately swallowed up by the crowds in
the mall. Shepherd was too dumbfounded to do anything but stand and
watch him go.

SHEPHERD WENT BACK his hotel, but he couldn’t
concentrate enough to read and watching television was way too
depressing to think about. He took out a legal pad and started
making notes on corporate structures he might be able to use to get
Charlie’s money out of Thailand, but that didn’t hold his attention
for very long either. Soon he gave up even pretending to do
anything productive and just sat, doing nothing, looking out the
window at the sunlight glinting off the blue and cream panels of
the Burj Khalifa.

The Burj Khalifa is the world’s tallest
building. It’s a few feet short of half a mile high, almost the
same height as two Empire State Buildings stacked one on top of
another. Up close you lose perspective and the Burj looks pretty
much like any other office building, just a lot bigger. But when
you see it from a distance, reaching for the heavens out of the
featureless monotony of the desert, the one-hundred-sixty story
Burj looks like a giant rocket ship about to roar into deep space
carrying samples of all the earth’s living creatures. If Noah were
to come back today and build an ark, Shepherd figured it would look
exactly like the Burj Khalifa.

He swung his feet up on a coffee table, laced
his fingers together behind his head, and thought about the events
of the last couple of days. Twenty-four hours ago two guys had done
their best to kill somebody, even if their best hadn’t been very
much. It never occurred to him that their target could have been
anybody other than Charlie Kitnarok and that didn’t seem to have
crossed anyone else’s mind either. Certainly not Charlie’s.

However hard it might be for Shepherd to
believe that someone had hired two gunmen to kill
him
, it
was even harder for him to understand what had happened since the
attack, whoever the real target might have been. Because
nothing
had happened since the attack. It was almost as if
it had never occurred at all. He hadn’t been questioned by the
Dubai police or anybody else who was investigating the incident.
Adnan and Robert Darling hadn’t mentioned it when he saw them.
Sally Kitnarok seemed to be about as worried as if her husband had
slipped on a loose rug. And Charlie himself was absolutely
exhilarated.

What in the hell was really going on
here?

All at once, an impulse came over Shepherd
that at first seemed silly. But the more he thought about it, the
more reasonable it began to feel. Besides, he had absolutely
nothing else to do.

He went downstairs, got into a taxi, and told
the driver to take him to the souk. Although he wasn’t absolutely
certain where the ambush had taken place, he remembered more or
less where he had hijacked the
abra
in which he and Charlie
had made their escape. If he started there, he could probably work
his way back along their escape route and find the place where they
had been ambushed.

He wanted to see it again. He wanted to look
at where the attacked had happened. He didn’t know what good that
would do him or anyone else, but nevertheless that was what he
wanted.

***

REVERSE ENGINEERING THEIR escape route turned out to
be harder than Shepherd expected.

Once he left Dubai Creek, crossed over
Baniyas Road, and entered the souk, he quickly became confused. The
tangled warren of narrow passageways would have robbed a bloodhound
of its sense of direction and Shepherd was no bloodhound. He
stumbled around for nearly an hour, doubling back and turning
around so many times he figured he had to be going in circles. He
was about to give up on the whole idea and find a taxi to take him
back to the hotel when a sign over a shop house caught his eye:
SALEM ALI BAKERY.

At first he couldn’t work out why the sign
seemed so familiar, but then all in a rush it came back to him. He
was poking his head above the wall of bales where he and Charlie
had taken cover. The first shooter was holding the big handgun in
front of him in a perfect Weaver stance. The shooter was lifting
the gun’s muzzle and swinging it toward him. And just as Shepherd
ducked back behind the bags, he caught sight of that sign on a
building behind the shooter.

Shepherd looked around. He was standing in an
open courtyard formed by two rows of shop houses and now he
realized it was the same one in which the ambush had taken place
yesterday. He hadn’t recognized it at first because nothing about
it looked the same. The two pallets of burlap bales behind which he
and Charlie had taken cover were gone, leaving the front of the
building through which they had made their escape appearing
curiously denuded. Everything else was different as well.

There had been several big wooden crates
where Charlie’s driver had taken cover, and Shepherd clearly
remembered seeing on CNN a pile of red and blue cement bags against
which the second gunman had died. Neither of those were there
anymore either. Instead, one side of the courtyard was now littered
with haphazard piles of yellow, red, and blue plastic crates, most
of which appeared to be filled with women’s clothing. The other
side of the courtyard was empty.