World of Trouble (9786167611136)

by Needham, Jake

  “So there you go,” Shepherd said. “We wait and we watch.”

  “And that’s it. That’s your plan?”

  “Not entirely. The plane is going wherever it’s going, but I figure maybe Charlie is already wherever that is.”

  “Not a bad thought.” Keur mulled over that possibility. “Not bad at all.”

  “So I’m going to keep trying to track him down. Maybe, if we get lucky, we can roll everything up at once. Charlie, the plane, the load of weapons. What do you think?”

  “Works for me.”

  “Okay, then pour me one of whatever you’re having. I’ve got to make some calls.”

  Shepherd took out his own cell phone and tried Charlie’s two cell numbers again, but they were both still going straight to voice mail. Then he called all the Dubai numbers he had. Three numbers at the house, two at the office, and even the number for the Kitnarok Foundation. No answer anywhere. All in all he had made eight calls and reached exactly nobody. Not much of a start.

  Keur came back and handed Shepherd a glass that, like his, was half full of clear liquid. Shepherd sipped cautiously at it. Cold water. He made a mental note never again to say to an FBI agent, I’ll have what you’re having.

  Out of desperation he started thumbing through the address book on his cell phone, looking for anybody who might have any idea where Charlie might be. As he watched the names flick by on the little screen, something began to scratch at the outer edge of his consciousness. Was one of the names reminding him of something that might help locate Charlie? The harder he stared at those names and tried to decide what was hanging there just out of reach, the more convinced he was there was something. He just couldn’t bring it into focus. Eventually, he gave up thinking about it and went back to trying to decide who to call.

  Since it was almost 1:00 A.M. in Bangkok, that made the problem a little more complicated. No commercial number in Europe was likely to answer since it was well past normal business hours there. He tried a few numbers anyway. Two bankers, two accountants, and a lawyer, all of whom did work for Charlie. Three of them were in London, one in Paris, and one in Zurich. He knew it was ridiculous to hope that any European might be in his office after 5:00 P.M., but he called the numbers anyway. Sure enough, none of them answered. Shepherd had made thirteen calls and hadn’t spoken a word to anyone. He was beginning to detect a pattern.

  Shepherd went back to his address book and almost immediately saw a listing he had missed the first time around: Sally Kitnarok. He couldn’t remember why he had a number for Charlie’s wife, but he crossed his fingers that it was a private cell phone and dialed. After two rings somebody picked up, then immediately cut the connection. When he dialed back, the number went straight to voice mail. Somebody had shut the phone off when his call came in. It was the kind of thing most people automatically did when a cell phone they had forgotten to turn off rang when they were asleep.

  Shepherd looked at his watch again and did the math. If Sally was in Europe or even the Middle East, it was unlikely she would be asleep yet. But if she were in Thailand…

  He didn’t want to jump to any conclusions. Maybe Sally wasn’t even with Charlie, wherever he was. Maybe she just didn’t want to be disturbed by a call right then. But if that was the case, she would see his cell number when she looked at her missed calls and call him back in an hour or so. If she didn’t call back, then that would make it more likely she was in Thailand. And that she didn’t want to talk to him.

  It wasn’t much, Shepherd knew. It might not be anything. But it was all he had after more than a dozen phone calls.

  His eyes drifted back to the address book and he found himself looking at another name he had passed over before: Tanit Chaiya, Charlie’s man at Bangkok Bank.

  Then all at once Shepherd realized exactly what had been scratching at him before. And he realized how he just might be able to find Charlie after all.

  Keur had been sitting silently on the other couch, watching Shepherd make his phone calls. He stood up, stifled a yawn, and stretched.

  “Okay, now what?” he asked. “Got any other ideas?”

  “Yeah,” Shepherd said. “I sure do.”

  ***

  WHEN CHARLIE INSISTED that Shepherd drop what he was doing in Hong Kong and come straight back to Dubai, Shepherd had been trying to find out what had happened to some of the money he had wired out of Charlie’s Thai bank accounts.

  The fact that a little money was missing wasn’t all that alarming by itself. It wasn’t uncommon for international wires to be misrouted, and only five or six million dollars out of a total transfer of nearly six hundred million dollars was unaccounted for. Five or six million dollars was a lot of money when it represented a beach-front house in Maui with a couple of mind-blowing cars in the garage and a steady flow of hot women, but in the world of international capital flows of the magnitude that Shepherd routinely dealt with for Charlie, it was little more than spillage.

  Shepherd hadn’t thought any more about that missing money since he left Hong Kong. But now, sitting there looking at the name of Tanit Chaiya in his address book, he started thinking about it again.

  Why had Charlie brushed him off when he said he wanted to follow up and figure out what had happened to that money? If Charlie wanted to launder some money, he had picked a hell of an effective way to do it. He had even managed to hide it from his personal laundry man.

  Maybe part of Charlie’s plan all along had been to make that six million dollars disappear when Shepherd moved the rest of the Thai funds to safety. Maybe that was why Charlie hadn’t wanted Shepherd to get too curious about what happened to it. Maybe Charlie had a use for that money he didn’t want to tell Shepherd about.

  All at once Shepherd felt things starting to come together. And, as it was when good ideas occurred to most people, he wondered why it had taken him so long to think of it.

  If he could find out where that money had gone, he would find Charlie, too. He would bet his last dollar they were both in exactly the same place.

  When Shepherd told Keur what he was thinking, Keur looked unimpressed.

  “Why would General Kitnarok do something like that? He’d just be stealing from himself.”

  “You’re missing the point. The idea was to make the money untraceable. Charlie was creating a hidden slush fund that nobody knew he had.”

  “What does he need a slush fund for? He has more money than God.”

  Keur scratched at his neck and thought about it some more.

  “Wouldn’t it be easy enough to trace the wires from General Kitnarok’s accounts, regardless of where they ended up?” he asked.

  “Yeah, it would. But if the missing money was never wired in the first place, you wouldn’t find it, would you?”

  “I’m not following you.”

  “If the six million was drawn in cash instead of being wired, put in a couple of suitcases and moved to wherever Charlie wanted it to go, there would be no way to trace it.”

  “How would he get suitcases of cash out of Thailand?”

  “That would be difficult, so my guess is he didn’t try. He must need the money here.”

  “Six million dollars in cash? Here in Thailand? What in God’s name for?”

  “You really don’t understand how politics works in Thailand, do you, Keur?”

  “You’re saying Kitnarok needed the money to bribe someone?”

  “No, not for a bribe. Bribes are an ordinary business expense here. They’re paid by check or wire transfer just like other business expenses. Nobody even bothers to cover them up.”

  “Then what would he need cash for?”

  “For the red shirts, Keur. Think about it. Five hundred baht a day is the going rate for a demonstrator, a little over fifteen dollars. Pay the going rate and you can turn out as many people as you need. A hundred thousand people would cost Charlie a million and a half dollars a day. With the six million that went missing, he could fill Bangkok’s streets and shut the city
down for four days.”

  “Then what? A few days of people in the streets wouldn’t do him any good. He needs the whole country to take a huge hit. That won’t do it.”

  “It would if Harvey is full of AK-47s, rocket launchers, plastic explosives, and grenades. And if those weapons are distributed to a small group who move into the city under cover of the demonstrators,” Shepherd said. “They fire at the troops trying to contain the demonstration; the troops fire back; hundreds if not thousands are killed on both sides; and there’s your civil war.”

  Keur took that in and chewed it over.

  “You think General Kitnarok is really that cynical?” he asked after a while.

  “Maybe Charlie doesn’t know it’s going to happen,” Shepherd said. “Maybe Charlie really does think he’s just buying a political demonstration.”

  “Then who’s pulling the strings?”

  Shepherd said nothing.

  “The CIA?”

  Shepherd said nothing.

  Keur smiled. Then he leaned back on the sofa and laced his fingers together behind his head.

  “Even if you’re right,” he said, “what difference does it make? You have no way of finding out where that money went.”

  “Maybe I do,” Shepherd said. “But it’s the middle of the night. No matter how much I might want to, I can’t do it right now. I’ll tackle it first thing in the morning.”

  “What are you going to do in the morning?”

  “Not just me, Keur. You, too. We’re going to drop in on somebody unannounced.”

  “Who?”

  Shepherd waved the question aside.

  “Be ready to go at eight,” he said. “And have that cute little FBI badge of yours all polished up. You can be the bad cop and I’ll be the good cop. That’s typecasting, I know, but what the hell.”

  Shepherd left Keur thinking about that, went into his bedroom, and closed the door behind him. He barely managed to get his clothes off before he dropped into bed and slid almost immediately into a deep and dreamless sleep, the kind some people call the sleep of the dead.

  That was just an expression, of course, one he had heard a hundred times before. But Shepherd’s last conscious thought before sleep took him was that he really wished it were called something else.

  FIFTY-TWO

  SHEPHERD AND KEUR were in a taxi on the way to Bangkok Bank when Shepherd’s cell phone rang. He took it out and answered it, but it kept ringing anyway.

  “Not that one,” Keur prompted. “It’s the Nokia.”

  “Right,” Shepherd nodded. “I need more coffee.”

  He fished out the Nokia and pressed the answer button.

  “Jack, it’s Kate. Can you talk?”

  Shepherd’s eyes flicked involuntarily to Keur. They were trapped in traffic on Rajadamri Road right in front of what was left of the Four Seasons Hotel. It would probably take them another fifteen minutes or more to fight their way through the gridlock and cover the remaining five hundred yards to the Bangkok Bank Building. He didn’t see what choice he had.

  “Go ahead.”

  “Harvey left Dubai about forty minutes ago. They filed a flight plan for Bangkok. It says they’re landing at Don Mueang.”

  Shepherd thought back to when they had stood on the top floor of that parking garage and Kate had pointed out Harvey parked outside what she said was a CIA facility at the old Don Mueang airport. Would the Agency really ship a planeload of arms into Bangkok and distribute them right out of their own facility? That seemed wildly unlikely. Not even the Agency was that arrogant.

  He glanced at his watch: 8:15 A.M. It was a six-and-a-half hour flight to Thailand from Dubai. That meant the plane would arrive in Thailand somewhere around 2:00 P.M. local time, depending on whether they actually intended to land at Don Mueang or not. Just because they filed a flight plan for Don Mueang didn’t mean the plane was going there. And he would bet they weren’t. But wherever the plane was going, one thing at least was now absolutely clear. The clock had started.

  He had less than six hours.

  ***

  WHEN THEY GOT to Bangkok Bank, Keur flashed his badge at the security desk in the lobby and they took the elevator straight up to Tanit Chaiya’s office without being announced. Shepherd liked their chances a lot better that way.

  “Don’t laugh,” he told Keur in the elevator, “but this guy looks just like Woody Allen.”

  They brushed past Tanit’s secretary and pushed straight into his office. Tanit half rose from his desk, his heavy black glasses sagged to one side, and his mouth dropped open.

  Keur looked at Shepherd and laughed out loud. “Goddamn,” he said, “the little shit really does look like Woody Allen.”

  They took the two chairs facing Tanit’s desk without being asked to sit down. They didn’t say a word until Tanit sat back down, too. Then Keur took out his badge wallet, flipped it open, and held it up for Tanit to see.

  “I am Special Agent Leonard Keur of the FBI,” he announced in his best television voice. “I have some questions for you.”

  Shepherd thought Tanit looked less impressed than he had expected him to be.

  “You have no authority here,” Tanit said.

  “Where’s the rest of the money?” Shepherd asked, hoping to get Tanit’s full attention before the issue of authority took over the conversation.

  “What money are you—”

  “Cut the shit,” Keur snapped. “A little over six million dollars is missing from a series of wire transfers you arranged on Mr. Shepherd’s instructions. If you tell us what you did with it and where it is now, we’re out of your life and no one else needs to know about this. If you don’t, I am personally going to fuck you up, you worthless piece of crap.”

  Tanit’s eyes opened wide and he looked at Shepherd. Time for the good cop to take the stage.

  “I know you didn’t take the money, Tanit.”

  Tanit quickly began shaking his head.

  “But unless you tell us what happened to it, I’m not going to be able to convince him,” Shepherd went on, inclining his head toward Keur. “And he’s the one you have to convince.”

  Tanit licked his lips anxiously. “You must understand that—”

  “I must understand shit, you little turd,” Keur snapped. “Where’s the fucking money?”

  Being the bad cop looked to Shepherd like a lot more fun than being the good cop. Especially the way Keur was playing it. Either he was a whiz at method acting or he had a lot of experience in the role.

  “You have to understand,” Tanit said, his eyes shifting to Shepherd, “that I…”

  “You what?” Shepherd prompted.

  “I was just following my instructions.”

  “I gave you your instructions. I didn’t tell you to—”

  “Not my instructions from you,” Tanit said. “My instructions from General Kitnarok.”

  Shepherd glanced at Keur, who smiled.

  “What were those instructions?” he asked.

  “To send six million United States dollars from the accounts to our Phuket branch before transferring the rest according to your instructions.”

  “Whose account did it go into?”

  “No one’s. It was to be converted into cash. Then we packed it into two suitcases and held it for collection.”

  “Who collected it?”

  Tanit hesitated, his eyes flicking rapidly back and forth from Keur to Shepherd.

  “I don’t think—”

  “Damn right you don’t think, you little shit,” Keur exploded. “If you don’t tell me—”

  Shepherd waved Keur into silence.

  “Who was it, Tanit?”

  Tanit sighed and looked away.

  “It was the wife,” he said after a moment. “It was General Kitnarok’s wife.”

  “Sally Kitnarok?” Shepherd asked. “Are you sure?”

  “I am sure of nothing,” Tanit shrugged. “I was told to send six million US dollars to our Phuket branch and
that General Kitnarok’s wife would collect the money in cash when she wanted it.”

  “US dollars?” Shepherd interrupted. “He wanted the cash in US dollars?”

  “No,” Tanit said. “He wanted the cash in Thai baht.”

  “Did Sally collect it? Personally?”

  “So I am told.”

  “Then Sally Kitnarok is in Phuket?”

  “I have no idea where she is. I was informed she appeared at our Phuket branch and collected the money. That is all I know.”

  “When did she collect it?”

  “Two days ago.”

  Tanit sighed heavily again and slumped in his chair.

  Shepherd sighed, too.

  Phuket, he thought to himself. Fucking Phuket.

  He should have known that, in the end, it would all come down to fucking Phuket.

  ***

  IT WAS MONTE Carlo that Somerset Maugham described as a sunny place for shady people, but he could just as easily have been talking about Phuket. An island resort off the southwest coast of Thailand about five hundred miles to the south of Bangkok, Phuket is set in the turquoise splendor of the Andaman Sea and soaked by sunshine nearly year-round. It is a glamorous, alluring vacation hideaway that has become justly famous among sailors, golfers, scuba divers, and social glitterati all over the world.

  But Phuket has also attained a certain measure of fame among quite a different group: international criminals on the lam. The weather is good, the living is easy, the food is terrific, and the women are… well, Thai. Best of all, if the local police notice them at all, rascals on the run are generally offered the option of making a modest contribution to the local authorities to renew their invisibility. A lot of people seemed to think of Thailand as not much more than an asylum for the morally impaired anyway -- it’s the cuisine and the sex, the theory goes -- so what better place could there be for a scoundrel to lie low?

  Every now and then a small piece would appear in the Bangkok Post about a German bank robber or an American con artist who had been discovered living quietly in Phuket and bundled off home for trial. These intermittent demonstrations of Thai cooperation with international law enforcement were very impressive, and it was doubtless a coincidence that they usually occurred just after the fugitive had exhausted the booty from his misdemeanors. Regardless, the total population of villains hiding out in Phuket never seemed to be significantly diminished by an occasional extradition in the name of international cooperation.