World of Trouble (9786167611136)

by Needham, Jake

  “Do I gather from that,” he asked, “that you miss the UK? Or is it Thailand you miss?”

  “I don’t know,” she said “but I miss somewhere. All I really want is a little peace and stability. Sometimes I wonder if I’ll ever have that again.”

  Shepherd knew that was his cue to say something comforting, but he didn’t know what it ought to be. Sally was married to a political figure beloved by roughly half of Thailand and reviled by the other half. No matter what Charlie did in the future, he would always be a saint to about thirty million people and a devil to thirty million more. Sally was probably right. Security and stability were unlikely to be part of her future.

  They sat for a few minutes in a companionable silence. Although Shepherd wanted to ask Sally if she knew anything about Charlie’s plans for the future, he wasn’t sure he should. Trying to pry information out of a wife about her husband felt unseemly, and there were issues of client confidentiality to consider, too. On the other hand, if Charlie really was going back into politics and was being less than honest with him about that, maybe that excused him from being entirely honest himself.

  An old lawyer joke popped into Shepherd’s mind. What I really want is a one-armed lawyer, so he can’t say on one hand but then on the other hand. Sometimes he had no problem at all understanding why people loved lawyer jokes so much.

  Shepherd stopped trying to decide if he should ask and just asked Sally what he wanted to know.

  “Is Charlie preparing for a triumphal return to Thailand?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Is he going back into politics? Does he want to be prime minister of Thailand again?”

  “I don’t know. What’s he telling you?”

  “He thinks that was what the attack was all about. He thinks someone was trying to stop him from going back.”

  “Maybe,” Sally said, “but then again maybe it was just an angry husband.”

  Shepherd looked away. It made him uncomfortable when married people joked about each other’s presumed infidelities. He had taken that tour and it still hurt far too much for him to joke along with them.

  “It’s not what Charlie’s saying that bothers me,” Shepherd said, going back to where they had been before Sally’s little lurch into the inner workings of her marital life. “It’s the things he’s doing. They’re things that make me wonder if he’s not preparing for a political comeback.”

  “What things?”

  Shepherd paused. He felt awkward and Sally obviously saw it.

  “Never mind, Jack. I shouldn’t have asked.”

  Shepherd thought for a moment. If the funds in Thailand were really family funds as Charlie had claimed, then they were Sally’s funds, too, weren’t they? So he composed an answer for Sally that he could at least tell himself skirted the edge of violating client confidence.

  “Charlie asked me to reorganize the funds you have in Thailand.” He tapped his palm against the brown envelope on his lap. “To get it all out of the country immediately.”

  Shepherd knew he shouldn’t have said even that much, but he wanted to see Sally’s reaction. He was disappointed when she didn’t give him one.

  “I don’t know anything about that, Jack. That kind of thing is way over my head.”

  He doubted that, but there seemed to be no reason to say so.

  “Does Charlie think something is about to happen in Thailand?” he asked instead.

  “I really don’t know. Charlie hasn’t said anything specific to me.”

  Sally’s eyes shifted slightly down and to the left. It was a classic tell. There was more, but she wasn’t going to say what it was. Still, that was fair enough, Shepherd thought. What a man tells his wife should remain between them.

  “I’m sorry,” he said to Sally. “I shouldn’t have asked.”

  Sally leaned across and put her hand on his arm.

  “You’re our friend, Jack. You can ask anything you like. If I knew, I’d tell you.”

  Shepherd just nodded at that. It wasn’t true, of course. He knew it and he was sure Sally knew he knew it, but it would have been churlish of him to say that so he just let it go.

  “Are you finally over that ex-wife of yours?”

  The change of subject was so naked that Shepherd wondered briefly how Sally had managed it without laughing out loud.

  “Yeah,” he said. “Absolutely.”

  Sally gave him a look brimming with sympathy, the sort of look people gave to beggars in wheelchairs.

  “Charlie and I care about you, Jack. You’re our friend and we want you to be happy. You don’t deserve what happened to you. You need to meet somebody new. You have to open your heart to someone else.”

  Suddenly the conversation was turning into a visit with Oprah.

  “Do you keep in touch with Anita?” Sally asked before Shepherd could leap to his feet and flee.

  “Anita and I were married,” he said. “She found somebody she liked better, she left me, we got divorced. End of story. What do we have to keep in touch about?”

  “Charlie and I keep thinking that maybe you’ll get back together. You and Anita were a wonderful couple.”

  “Apparently not.”

  “Yes, you were. And surely Anita knows that, too.”

  “It must have slipped her mind there for a few minutes.”

  “Give her a chance, Jack. Things change, you know.”

  “Not this thing.”

  “Never give up, Jack. Never.”

  Shepherd really didn’t want to talk about Anita any longer. Love never comes to anyone logically and there is certainly nothing logical about the way it vanishes. He’d had that discussion before with too many other people already and it had never taken him any place he wanted to go.

  Shepherd found a way to excuse himself as quickly as possible after that, gave Sally a goodbye kiss on the cheek, and walked out to where the hotel driver was waiting for him beyond the security gate. He got into the car, leaned his head against the thick cushions of the back seat, and closed his eyes.

  It felt good to be alone again.

  NINE

  ON THE WAY back to the hotel Shepherd got out his phone and checked the flights to Bangkok. There were no seats until the next day and he thought for a moment of calling Charlie and telling him he had changed his mind about using one of his jets. But he knew Charlie would give him a lot of crap and he didn’t want to hear it, so he just let it go and booked himself on an Emirates Airways flight that left the next morning. The major problem there was that then he had the rest of the afternoon and the evening to kill in Dubai, which as far as Shepherd was concerned was like scoring free time in Dallas. It was a windfall he could live a long time without.

  Shepherd didn’t really feel like going back to the hotel, but he didn’t know what else to do. That was when it occurred to him he hadn’t had a decent meal since he left Hong Kong. The idea of getting a little comfort food suddenly seemed pretty appealing so he told the driver to take him to the Dubai Mall.

  The Dubai Mall has millions of square feet of space, maybe tens of millions; several hundred stores; miles of marble-floored corridors; an Olympic-sized ice rink; and even the world’s largest aquarium, one three stories high, fifty yards long, and filled with sharks. Shepherd wondered if anyone else in Dubai saw the sharks as ironic. Probably not. He doubted Dubai was a place where irony played particularly well.

  He entered the mall through an entrance called the Waterfall, which actually was a waterfall, and rode an escalator that rose hundreds of feet behind the tumbling water. He strolled past Bloomingdales, Banana Republic, Armani, Fendi, Ralph Lauren, Jimmy Choo, and even a Dean & Deluca market. Anyone who doubts the power of globalization has never been to a shopping mall in Dubai.

  ***

  THE MAN PICKED Shepherd when the hotel car turned onto the main road at Palm Jumeirah. He stayed well back as Shepherd’s car headed north on Sheikh Zayed Road, but easily kept it in sight.

  The man didn�
�t think Shepherd would be expecting surveillance. He was certain the possibility of it had never even crossed Shepherd’s mind, but he didn’t want to take any chances. It was almost time to move, he might even move today, but if Shepherd suspected he was being watched he would have to back off. And he didn’t want to back off.

  It surprised the man when the car dropped Shepherd at the Dubai Mall, and he was not a man who liked surprises. He had assumed Shepherd was going back to his hotel. So what the hell was he doing at a shopping mall? Was he meeting someone there? That might prove to be a problem. Fortunately, there was a valet parking station at the entrance where Shepherd got out of the hotel car, so the man dumped his own car with the valet and followed Shepherd inside.

  ***

  SHEPHERD TOOK AN escalator to the mall’s next level and walked until he spotted the familiar red and yellow sign.

  FAT BURGER

  The Last Great Hamburger Stand

  When Shepherd had stumbled upon the place for the first time he could hardly believe it. A Fat Burger in Dubai? He hadn’t had a Fat Burger since the last time he was in L.A. That was several years back, but he had never waivered in his conviction that Fat Burgers were the greatest hamburgers ever sold anywhere. The name was pretty unappetizing, of course—downright disgusting if he were to be completely honest about it—but he could live with almost anything they wanted to call themselves since the burgers tasted so good.

  Shepherd went in and looked around. The place was absolutely identical to the Fat Burgers in LA and was about half filled with a mix of locals and tourists. He was damn near starving to death by then, so he ordered a double Fat Burger, fries, and a Coke from the cheerful Filipino girl behind the counter and sat down to wait for it.

  ***

  THE MAN WAS a Caucasian dressed in khaki trousers and a plain white, short-sleeved shirt. Neither tall nor short, neither heavy nor skinny, neither young nor old, he looked ordinary in every respect. His appearance was completely forgettable, which was why he was so good at surveillance.

  At first he was afraid he might have been spotted and Shepherd was about to launch himself on a cleaning route. A shopping mall was a textbook location for it. But soon it became obvious that Shepherd wasn’t doing anything of the sort. He had no idea anyone was on him. The man could have been driving a float from the Rose Parade and Shepherd wouldn’t have spotted him.

  The crowds were thinner in the part of the mall where Shepherd was walking now and the man started thinking about making his move. Somewhere public was good, of course, but not too public. He was just wondering if this might not be the best chance he was likely to get when Shepherd suddenly started walking very fast and darted into a storefront about thirty yards ahead.

  For a moment the man panicked. Shepherd must have spotted him after all and had just been lulling him into a sense of false confidence. Now Shepherd was moving and he had been caught flat-footed. Walking as fast as he dared without calling attention to himself, he headed for the same storefront into which Shepherd had vanished. He glanced at the sign as he got closer. Fat Burger. What the hell was that?

  When the man walked in, he almost fell over Shepherd. He was sitting on a molded yellow plastic chair at a small black Formica table. His back was to the door and he was watching the opposite end of the room where half a dozen red-and-yellow uniformed girls worked behind a counter.

  The man suddenly understood he hadn’t been spotted at all. This was some kind of fast food place and Shepherd had just gone in to eat. He kept walking toward the counter and ordered a Coke. He paid for it, turned around as if he were looking for something, and glanced in Shepherd’s direction. One of the red-and-yellow uniformed girls had just delivered his order to him on a red plastic tray and Shepherd was so involved in digging into it that he wasn’t paying the slightest attention to anything else.

  The man went to a table by the wall and took a chair that faced in Shepherd’s direction. He sipped at his Coke and watched for a while. There was no one else seated in the area around Shepherd and he appeared totally absorbed in his food. After watching for five minutes, the man decided this was the best chance he was going to get. He knocked back the rest of his Coke, stood up, and walked toward Shepherd.

  ***

  SHEPHERD FELT RATHER than saw the man approaching. He didn’t look up. He still had a few bites of his Fat Burger left and they were far more interesting to him than some guy walking by his table. But the man didn’t walk by his table. He stopped, stood right next to it, and cleared his throat.

  “How did a guy like you end up working for somebody like General Kitnarok?” the man asked.

  Now Shepherd looked up. He wasn’t sure he had heard right.

  “A man like you, Mr. Shepherd? With your background and reputation? How did you get mixed up with General Kitnarok?”

  The guy was a middle-aged Caucasian with a completely forgettable face. Shepherd was certain he had never seen him before.

  “No, Mr. Shepherd,” the man said as if he were reading his mind. “We’ve never met.”

  Shepherd picked up a paper napkin, folded it over once, and wiped his mouth. Then he just sat and looked at the guy and waited to see what was coming next.

  “I’m Special Agent Leonard Keur of the FBI.”

  “You’ve got to be kidding.”

  “Do I look like somebody who’s kidding?”

  “Can I see some ID?”

  The man took a dark brown leather folder out of his right rear trouser pocket. The folder looked beaten up, like it had a lot of mileage on it. Without being invited, he sat down in the plastic chair across from Shepherd and laid the folder on the table between them. He slid his forefinger inside and flipped it open.

  Clipped to one side of the folder was a gold badge that said Department of Justice at the top and Federal Bureau of Investigation at the bottom. On the other side was an identification card with the FBI seal and FBI printed in big blue letters. Shepherd bent forward and looked at the card. He popped the last bite of his Fat Burger in his mouth and chewed thoughtfully while he examined it.

  The card said the bearer’s name was Leonard Keur. Shepherd looked up and compared the face sitting across from him with the color photograph laminated to the card. It was the same guy. No doubt about it. The ID looked genuine enough, too, but since Shepherd had no idea what genuine FBI identification looked like, his opinion in the matter was probably of limited value.

  “What is this about?” he asked.

  “How long has General Kitnarok been your client?”

  “I don’t talk about my clients.”

  “Clients? Should that be client? Isn’t General Kitnarok your only client, Jack?”

  In Shepherd’s experience, when cops went from calling him Mr. Shepherd to calling him Jack, it never meant anything good. So he wiped his mouth again, pushed his tray away, and awaited developments.

  “What is your personal relationship with General Kitnarok?”

  “Good.”

  “That’s not what I meant.”

  “Then what did you mean?”

  “Is the general just a client or do you consider him a friend?”

  “Who are you really?”

  Keur was starting to look annoyed, which Shepherd rather liked.

  “I showed you my identification,” he snapped.

  “Maybe you bought that badge on the internet.”

  “Call Washington if you have any doubts. Call the field office there. Or call the Director for all I care.” The man pulled a Blackberry out of a front trouser pocket and laid it on the table. “There you go. Knock yourself out.”

  Shepherd didn’t pick it up.

  “Who is Pete Logan and what does he look like?” he asked instead.

  “Pete is the legat in Bangkok,” Keur replied without hesitation. “He’s about five foot nine, forty-five years old, has a clean-shaved head, and drinks more scotch than he should. By the way, he speaks very highly of you.”

  Legat is State De
partment slang for the resident FBI agent in an American embassy abroad. It’s a contraction of the title Legal Attaché, abbreviations and acronyms being much beloved by government types. Pete Logan was the agent posted at the American embassy in Bangkok and Shepherd had hung around with him a little during his ill-fated tour there teaching business at Chulalongkorn University. If this guy knew Logan well to describe him that way, he was probably for real.

  “Okay, let’s say for the sake of argument I’m convinced you’re actually an FBI agent named Leonard Keur. What do you want?”

  “I want to talk to you.”

  “About what?”

  Keur stood up. “Let’s take a walk.”

  “I don’t want to take a walk.”

  “Yes, you do, Jack. You want to take a walk, and you want to take a walk with me.”

  Shepherd sat looking at Keur and thought about how to play this. His first instinct was to be a hard ass, but then that was always his first instinct and he knew that sometimes it really wasn’t the best way to go.

  “Just one thing,” Keur said.

  “Yeah? What’s that?”

  Keur reached down, plucked an unused napkin off Shepherd’s tray, and handed to him.

  “Wipe your mouth. You’ve got mustard on your top lip.”

  TEN

  THEY RODE THE escalator up two levels in silence and strolled down a wide corridor lined with women’s clothing stores. They passed Guess, Shanghai Tang, Miss Selfridge, and something with the unlikely and, Shepherd thought, remarkably unattractive name of S*uce. They got all the way to Bloomingdales before Keur spoke again.

  “You going to answer my question, Jack?”

  “I didn’t hear a question.”

  “The one I asked you back in the burger place. Why is a man like you working for General Kitnarok?”

  “I don’t work for him. He’s my client.”