World of Trouble (9786167611136)

by Needham, Jake

  “You have a client or you work for the guy. It’s a distinction without a difference.”

  “A distinction without a difference? That’s a familiar phrase. Where did you go to law school, Agent Keur?”

  “I went to Fordham.”

  “Why? Couldn’t you get into Yale?”

  It was a snide thing to say and Shepherd felt lousy almost as soon as the words were out of his mouth. He was letting Keur get under his skin.

  They passed through an enormous round atrium that rose in gold-trimmed tiers to a glass dome. Through it Shepherd could see a cloudless, cobalt-blue sky.

  “What do you want from me, Keur?”

  “Look, Jack, we need your help. There’s an investigation underway on which we want your advice.”

  “Are you serious? The Bureau wants to hire me?”

  “Not exactly hire. We can’t pay you.”

  “That doesn’t make you a very attractive client.”

  “We thought you might be willing to help us anyway. Money’s not everything. There could be other rewards.”

  “Such as what?”

  “Having the FBI owe you a favor is pretty valuable, don’t you think?”

  Shepherd wasn’t so sure about that, but he was curious where this was going so he tried to look impressed anyway. It wasn’t easy.

  “What are you investigating?” he asked.

  “I can’t tell you that.”

  “So you want my help investigating something, you don’t want to pay me for my help, and you won’t tell me what you’re investigating. Do you guys ever stop and think how stupid you sound sometimes?”

  “Look, Jack, we need to know what’s going on in General Kitnarok’s inner circle. We need to understand who the players are and how they relate to each other. We thought you might be in a good position to give us some guidance on that kind of thing.”

  “Why do you need to know that?”

  “I’ve already told you too much.”

  “You told me exactly nothing.”

  “I’ve gone as far as I can go. Can you help me?”

  “Look, Agent Keur, in my line of work you don’t talk to people about your clients, not unless the subpoena is nicely typed and has your name spelled right. And most of the time not even then.”

  “We’re not asking you for anything confidential, Counselor, just some general observations about how General Kitnarok’s inner circle works.”

  “I don’t know how Charlie’s inner circle works. I couldn’t help you even if I wanted to. I live in Hong Kong. I mostly deal with Charlie by telephone and email. I hardly ever see him. I don’t know who he talks to or about what.”

  “Then how about this? From now on, find a way to watch the comings and going of the people around General Kitnarok for me. Just keep me in the picture as to who’s got his ear, that sort of thing.”

  They walked on in silence until Shepherd realized they had reached the colossal aquarium that was the centerpiece of the mall. It held, so the mall claimed, five hundred sharks. They stopped and watched a huge school of fish swim by right at eye level. There looked to be hundreds of them, their red and gold bands shimmering as if they were wrapped in Christmas foil. Immediately behind the school of fish came three big sharks, swimming very slowly with such economy of motion that tiny motors might have been propelling them. The sharks’ swam with their mouths half open as they shadowed the red and gold fish and the sharp-pointed triangular teeth lining their jagged jaws were clearly visible. The message was so clear that Shepherd wondered if Keur had been leading him there all along.

  “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.”

&n
bsp; “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.

  ELEVEN

  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.

  Near the place where the CNN cameraman must have stood, several dozen long bolts of dark-colored cloth were propped on end against the wall and six or eight small metal chairs with black vinyl seats were pushed into a tight clump. They were the kind of chairs people used to call stenographers’ chairs back when there were still such things as stenographers. A man dressed in a white dishdasha and wearing a red and white checked ghutra wrapped around his head was sitting quietly in one of the chairs at the front of the clump. Shepherd couldn’t see the man’s face clearly at that distance, but he was old and weathered and his jaw was working as if he were chewing something.