“So why is Tommy in Dubai with you?” he asked. “And where is he now?”
“I’m not going to answer that.”
“Why not?”
“Because you’re a civilian, Shepherd. I don’t answer questions from civilians.”
Darling pulled a box of Gitanes Brunes out of the right-hand pocket of his jeans and shook out a cigarette.
“Still haven’t managed to quit, huh?” Shepherd asked.
Darling threw out another of those Gallic shrugs that Shepherd wished he could do just half as well.
“We’ve all got to die of something,” he said.
In an automatic gesture of courtesy, Darling tilted the box toward Shepherd and raised his eyebrows. Shepherd shook his head. Darling produced a book of matches and, leaning forward, cupped both hands around the tip of his cigarette to shield it from the light breeze and lit up. Darling tossed the book of matches onto the picnic table and exhaled slowly, blowing smoke out through his pursed lips in a steady stream. Then he returned the box to the pocket of his jeans.
“You don’t have the slightest idea what you’re into here, do you, Shepherd?” he said. “Not the slightest.”
“Hey,” Shepherd said, leaning back and spreading his hands, “I’m willing to learn.”
Darling smoked quietly and seemed to think about that. He looked like a man who had just gotten a low-ball offer for his car and was mulling over whether a counteroffer was even worth the effort.
Darling could just get up and walk away anytime, Shepherd knew, but he hoped he wouldn’t. What could he do about it? Wrestle him to the ground and tickle him until he spilled the beans? But Darling didn’t get up and walk away. Darling started to talk. It seemed to Shepherd that Darling looked almost happy to have the opportunity.
“Thailand’s fucked, Shepherd. It’s going to be in somebody’s pocket when this is all said and done, and I want it to be ours.”
“Ours?”
“The US of A, my friend, your native-born country. Or now that you’re living large in the third world, maybe you’ve forgotten that you’re an American.”
“I haven’t forgotten.”
“Good man, Shepherd. Good man.”
Darling fell silent and smoked some more. Shepherd didn’t push him. He seemed to be trying to make up his mind about how much to say, so Shepherd just waited.
“I’m only going to say this once, Shepherd. Listen carefully.”
Shepherd nearly asked Darling if he wanted him to take notes, but he choked back the words before they slipped out. This probably wasn’t the best time to be a wiseass.
“The future is going to come down to America and China,” Darling continued after a moment. “Nobody else matters. It’s the Chinese and us, and we’re going to divide the world.”
Shepherd thought that was a lot of garbage, probably, but he nodded encouragingly anyway. At least Darling was talking. He could decide later if he had said anything worthwhile.
“You ever hear of something called the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere, Shepherd?”
Shepherd shook his head.
“It was the concept used by the Japanese to justify their aggression in East Asia in the 1930s. They equated it with establishing a new international order for Asian countries in which they would share prosperity and peace, free from Western domination. The Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere is remembered today as a front for Japanese control of occupied countries during World War II, a period during which puppet governments manipulated local populations and economies for the benefit of Imperial Japan.”
“Are you saying that—”
“China is beginning to flex its muscles just like Japan did in the 1930s. But they are more cautious than the Japanese were. They are feeling their way, expanding their influence first just to their immediate neighbors. Hong Kong and Macau are already Chinese. The Europeans gave them back without a struggle. Tibet is firmly under Chinese control, too. Taiwan will come next. After that, it will get more difficult for China.”
Shepherd nodded again. Darling kept talking.
“To the west and north, China is sealed in by Russia. There’s Mongolia, of course, but who gives a fuck about Mongolia? To the south, they are sealed in by the Himalayan Mountains and, on the other side of them, India. To the east, there’s not much but the Pacific Ocean. To the northeast, there’s Korea, but who gives a fuck about Korea either? That doesn’t leave any direction for China to go but southeast. Burma, Laos, Cambodia—”
“And Thailand.”
“Thailand’s the prize. It’s the most developed country in Southeast Asia and geographically it’s at the heart of it. Control Thailand and the rest falls into your hands. First mainland Southeast Asia, then Malaysia and Indonesia. It’s China’s twenty-first century version of the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere.”
“You’re telling me you believe that the Chinese are about to invade Southeast Asia?”
“Don’t pretend to be a simpleton, Shepherd. You understand exactly what I’m saying.”
“Spell it out for me. Just in case I don’t.”
“You don’t take countries over by invading them anymore. You take them over by replacing their institutions and culture with your own institutions and culture. Ethnic Chinese already control all of the banks in Southeast Asia and most of the money, and you know where their real loyalties lie. All China needs is for a few governments to be beholden to them, too, and they’re home free. Complete domination of the economies of their client states, naval bases on the Gulf of Thailand and the Indian Ocean, the works.”
Shepherd nodded some more and tried to look like he agreed with Darling. It wasn’t all that difficult. Darling wasn’t completely wrong, and Shepherd knew it.
“The political upheaval in Thailand has already tilted it toward China,” he finished. “It’s the Chinese who are really behind the yellow shirts. All this people-power, love-and-peace stuff you hear from them is a bunch of shit. Those are China’s people, Shepherd, and that’s why they’re taking control of Thailand, to hand effective control to China. We need Charlie back in Thailand. He’s ours. He belongs to America. He’s bought and paid for.”
Darling stubbed out his cigarette. Almost immediately he pulled the box of Gitanes back out of his pocket and lit another one.
Maybe that’s the way to solve all this, Shepherd thought to himself. Just keep Darling talking long enough and he’ll die of lung cancer.
FORTY-THREE
“DO YOU WORK for CIA, Robert?”
Darling inhaled and blew the smoke out very slowly.
“Everybody in my business either works for the CIA or with the CIA, Shepherd. The little dogs follow the big dogs. If you don’t, you get eaten.”
That wasn’t exactly an answer to his question, of course, but Darling looked like he was still trying to decide how much more to say. Shepherd gave him a little nudge.
“Then let me ask the question this way. What is Robert Darling’s involvement in all this?”
“I’m just helping Charlie. I’m his friend.”
“Come on, Robert, don’t treat me like a dick. There’s a lot more to it than that.”
“Charlie and I are partners in Blossom Trading. Blossom Trading sells armaments.”
“Who do you and Charlie sell arms to?”
Darling said nothing. He looked as if he hadn’t even heard Shepherd.
“Are you arming the Thais?”
“Not all the Thais. We’re selling to Charlie’s people. And we’ve sold some stuff to the Muslim separatists. We’re not amoral, Shepherd. We only sell to the guys who have the same aims we do.”
“And what aims are those exactly.”
Darling smiled. “To restore good government to Thailand.”
“Is that what Adnan was doing for you in Thailand that got him killed? Restoring good government?”
“I don’t answer to you, Shepherd.”
“But you answer to somebody. And my guess is that you
answered to somebody about Adnan. Did Adnan’s head and his body end up in separate places because you fucked up, Robert? Did you fuck up and get Adnan killed?”
“Adnan is—”
“Was.”
“Adnan was,” Darling corrected himself, “a man who sometimes overplayed his hand.”
“With who?”
“Look, the demands from the Muslims were getting out of hand. Adnan seemed to be the right man to explain to the little pricks that there are limits as to how much support we can give them.”
Darling took a long pull on his cigarette and exhaled slowly.
“In retrospect… maybe that wasn’t the case,” he finished.
“So Adnan was decapitated by Muslim separatists?”
“They’re melodramatic motherfuckers, aren’t they?”
“So you’re saying you sent Adnan to tell the Muslim separatists to toe the party line and they killed him?”
Darling shrugged. “Maybe they have a problem with authority figures.”
“And who’s the authority figure here? You?”
Darling shrugged again. Shepherd was getting really tired of watching him do that no matter how good at it he was.
“Let’s just be absolutely clear here,” Shepherd said. “What you’re telling me is that the CIA is controlling and coordinating the opposition in Thailand to the present government. Both the Muslim separatists and Charlie’s red shirts.”
Darling held up both hands, palms out. “Hang on, Shepherd. I never said anything like that.”
“Yes, you did.”
Shepherd pointed over Darling’s shoulder to the hanger with the green roof.
“There’s an airplane in there that’s been carrying your arms shipments into Thailand. You’ve flying into a strip in the south that’s under the control of the Muslim rebels, leaving some of the weapons there, and taking the rest of them north to Bangkok by road.”
Darling looked down, took a final puff on his cigarette, and flicked it away. He didn’t say anything.
“Your airplane is on charter to a company called Trippler Aviation. Trippler Aviation is well known as a CIA front company.”
It might have been a bit of a stretch to say that it was well known. But what the hell, Shepherd thought. He was rolling.
“The registered owner of the airplane is the Kitnarok Foundation. You are a foundation trustee just like I am, Robert, so you should know that. Do you? Do you know that?”
“Where are you getting all this shit, Shepherd?”
“That’s really not the important question, is it? The important question is what Charlie knows. Does Charlie know his foundation owns an airplane that’s been chartered by the CIA to smuggle arms into Thailand, arms that are being used to start a civil war and overthrow the Thai government?”
Darling stood up so abruptly that Shepherd involuntarily leaned back. Darling reached across the picnic table and poked him in the chest with his index finger.
“You self-righteous, insignificant little piece of shit,” he screamed. “Who the fuck do you think you are?”
Darling poked harder and Shepherd leaned further back.
“There are rules to this game and there are lines you don’t cross, Shepherd. You’re nothing. We can crush you like a bug.”
Shepherd said nothing. It was hard to sound tough sitting at a picnic table while Darling was standing over him pushing a finger into his chest.
“Get out of our way, Shepherd. If you don’t, I’ll end your inconsequential little life without a second thought. Do you read me, mister?”
Shepherd slapped Darlings finger aside and slid off the bench. But by the time he had gotten to his feet, Darling had turned his back and was striding angrily toward the hanger.
“Don’t go away mad, Robert,” Shepherd called after him.
Darling didn’t answer or even look back. He just raised his right hand above his shoulder, extended his middle finger, and kept walking.
***
AFTER DARLING DISAPPEARED into the hanger, Shepherd stood there for a moment and thought about his options. Or he would have thought about them if he’d had any options to think about. As far as he could tell, he was fresh out. The book of matches that Darling had tossed away was on the table right in front of him. He sat back down, picked it up, and twisted it back and forth through his fingers while he replayed in his mind everything Darling had said.
He had rattled Darling’s cage. He had no doubt he had at least done that much. But otherwise it looked to Shepherd like he had pretty much blown it. He had heard Darling’s justification for what he was doing, but he didn’t know anymore about how Darling was doing it than he had before. What was Tommy’s role? And where the hell was Charlie?
The impound order on Harvey wouldn’t hold up for long. Shepherd’s guess was that it wouldn’t take Darling more than a day or two to get the Agency to come down on the UAE government and have it lifted. That meant in not much over forty-eight hours Harvey would be back on the ground in Thailand and the guns would be flowing.
Thailand was already coming apart. Reds and yellows were in the streets bashing each other with bats and iron bars, and random bombings targeting foreigners were holding Bangkok hostage to terror. Putting automatic weapons into the hands of the red shirts’ street fighters would trigger a full-scale slaughter. But what could he do about that in forty-eight hours? Shepherd had absolutely no idea.
He stopped twisting the matchbook in his hand and glanced down at it. Registering the crest on the cover, he raised his eyebrows in surprise. The matchbook was from the Duke of Wellington in Bangkok. Shepherd thought back to his meeting at the Duke with Pete Logan, the FBI’s man in Thailand. It was shortly after that Logan had told him the FBI had no interest in either Robert Darling or Blossom Trading.
So what was Darling doing now with a book of matches from the Duke of Wellington? Probably that was no more than a coincidence. Hundreds of people drank and smoked in the Duke every week. Having a book of matches from there only meant that Darling had been in Bangkok at some point, which was hardly surprising.
But what if it wasn’t a coincidence? Thailand was a very small place and people sometimes turned out to be connected to each other in surprising ways. He needed to keep that in mind.
Shepherd stood up from the picnic table, shoved the book of matches into his pocket, and trudged back to the Land Cruiser.
FORTY-FOUR
KEUR AND RACHEL just looked at Shepherd when he told them what Darling had said. He got the impression that the artistry of his interrogation was lost on them both.
“He look pretty angry when he stomped away,” Rachel said. “That’s something, I guess.”
“At least I’m sure now the Agency is behind everything. I got that much.”
“I don’t believe him,” Keur said. “Darling’s the bad guy here, not the US government.”
“Come on, Keur. The Agency’s been pulling this shit as long as it’s been in business. Subverting governments they don’t like, installing new ones they do. Of course, they almost always make a mess out of it, but they keep trying. Cuba, Chile, Iran, Greece, Vietnam, even Italy. You want me to go on?”
Keur shook his head, but he said nothing.
“We know the plane delivering the arms shipments is chartered to a CIA front that’s paying ten times what the charter is worth,” Shepherd continued. “It’s obvious Agency money is being laundered through the inflated charter fees to pay Blossom Trading for the weapons they’re flying into Thailand.”
“Then you’ve decided that General Kitnarok is fronting for the CIA?” Keur asked. “You think this is really a CIA operation to install a military government in Thailand with General Kitnarok at its head?”
“Yeah,” Shepherd said. “That’s exactly what I think.”
“Then he sure had you fooled up until now.”
Shepherd said nothing. He knew he deserved that. He didn’t like it, but he deserved it.
Shepherd didn’t want t
o believe that Charlie was working with the CIA to overthrow the elected government in Thailand, but the evidence was piling up. Charlie had a lot of faults, and Shepherd didn’t always see the world the same way he did, but he would have bet the old bastard loved his country enough that he wouldn’t have been a party to anything like that. It made Shepherd feel a little foolish now to think that Charlie might have been running a game on him the whole time they had been working together. Just stringing him along, day after day.
“What do you want to do now?” Rachel asked after a moment. “I can’t keep that gate closed much longer.”
“Doesn’t matter,” Shepherd said. “I’ve got all I’m going to get out of Darling, and Tommy is probably so shit scared now that he wouldn’t leave the hanger if you burned it down. Go ahead and do whatever you need to.”
Rachel picked up a microphone clipped to the dashboard of the Land Cruiser. She keyed it and told somebody to re-enter the gate’s original code and notify the man who complained that it was working again.
Keur folded his arms and looked at Shepherd. “So what’s next, Lone Ranger?”
Shepherd just sat and shook his head.
“I’m damned if I know, Tonto.”
***
RACHEL DROVE THEM back and they retrieved Keur’s car. The sun was low in the west and the air had taken on that peculiar luminescence that announces sunset in the desert. All around them, Dubai glowed softly with an otherworldly, golden light. It was an altogether different place from the brassy, hard-edged megalopolis that lived its days in the harsh white glare of the desert sun.
Before they left the garage, Shepherd took out his cell phone again and tried both of the numbers he had for Kate. He needed to warn her that Harvey would be flying back to Thailand with a load of weapons soon. At least he was reasonably certain it would. It would probably be a day or two before the paper barrier he had erected in Dubai would be knocked down, but inevitably it would be. A day or two wasn’t much, but it was something. Maybe it would give Kate the time she needed.
Both of Kate’s numbers went directly to voice mail and Shepherd hung up without leaving a message. Normally at that point he would have called Tommy and asked to be put in touch with Kate. But with Tommy and Darling holed up together in the hanger where Harvey was parked, that no longer seemed like a particularly good idea.
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