“What do you think?” Kate asked.
Shepherd shook his head. “I don’t know.”
Some of the men glanced at them, but none even bothered to stand up. They looked as if they saw helicopters coming and going all the time and the arrival of yet another one was only a mild distraction from the important business of the day: napping, eating, and talking to their friends in the shade of a grove of palm trees.
Mutt and Jeff unbuckled and jumped to the ground. They split apart, moved about twenty feet away in different directions, and took up defensive positions that allowed them to cover the open ground between the Blackhawk and the main house. Whatever weapons they had, they kept concealed. A few of the men lying underneath the palm trees looked in their direction, but didn’t really seem all that interested one way or the other.
“Either Charlie is here or he’s not,” Kate said. “I guess there’s only one way to find out.”
Kate unsnapped her shoulder harness and swung around until her feet dangled out the door. She gave the back of the seat a push with her right hand and slid to the ground.
Shepherd looked at Keur and shrugged. Then he opened his harness and jumped down right behind her. Keur followed.
After all of them were outside the Blackhawk, Shepherd saw they had the full attention of the men under the palm trees. He wondered what it was that surprised those men more. To see the prime minister of Thailand standing fifty feet away? Or to see her accompanied by two white guys?
A young fellow with a white scarf wrapped around his head and wearing dirty tan pants and a red golf shirt immediately jumped up and trotted toward the main house. Shepherd gathered they were about to be announced. The reactions of the other men varied. While a couple looked less than thrilled to see them, the overall response was anything other than hostile. Several men jumped to their feet and offered wais, a graceful Thai gesture of greeting in which the palms are pressed together in front of the face in deference and respect. One man, a young fellow wearing a New York Giants jersey and jeans, even stood at attention with his arms at his side and bowed slightly.
Kate didn’t seem to notice how the men were reacting, or perhaps she just didn’t care. Still, Shepherd was wary no matter how benign everything seemed. They had dropped straight into the red team’s clubhouse without an invitation. Somebody had killed the last prime minister of Thailand, quite possibly some of these very guys or some of their pals, and it wasn’t that much of a stretch to assume at least a few of them would be happy to see Kate follow Somchai off the planet. Shepherd was responsible for bringing Kate here, and he was responsible for getting her out again. It was just that simple. He had a soft spot for tough-minded women, that was true enough, but only if they were alive.
He was about to remind Kate of all that, but she struck out for the entrance to the main house before he could say anything. Mutt and Jeff moved slightly ahead of her, one on one side and one on the other. They were covering her as well as they could, but there was only so much two men could do. Shepherd looked at Keur to see what he thought, but he was already following Kate.
Shepherd knew this whole show had been his idea. It had seemed, as they say, like a good idea at the time, but now that they were here, he wasn’t so sure anymore. He felt like everything was only a beat from spinning completely out of control.
What if Charlie just grabbed Kate and locked her up? Or worse, what if somebody killed her? That would leave the field completely open for Charlie. He could declare victory for the reds and take over the country without firing another shot.
But Charlie was a decent and honorable man, Shepherd reminded himself. He wouldn’t do anything like that.
Who was he kidding? Charlie was getting ready to start a civil war and Shepherd didn’t think Charlie would be willing to sweep his opponent off the board with a single stroke?
But the truth was he really didn’t believe that. He had worked with the man for two years. He trusted Shepherd and Shepherd trusted him. Charlie might want power—a lot of people wanted power—but Shepherd was sure that wouldn’t turn him into a killer. At least he was pretty sure it wouldn’t, sure enough to place a wager on it.
And, come to think of it, he supposed that was exactly what he was doing. He was betting Kate’s life that he was right.
***
THE MAIN ENTRY to the house was up a short flight of black granite steps directly across the courtyard from where they had landed. At the top of the steps, a pair of glass doors was set into a glass corridor that connected the two main wings of the house. The effect of all that glass was undeniably spectacular, since it provided a view all the way through the house and out to a swimming pool set at the very center of the U-shaped structure. The water in the pool was so blue it looked as if it had been dyed, but no one was taking a swim or lounging in any of the teak chairs scattered around it.
Sally Kitnarok opened one of the glass doors and walked outside. She was wearing jeans and a man’s white shirt with a pair of red, low-heeled sandals. Shepherd thought that was encouraging. At least she wasn’t dolled up in Fidel Castro chic. Who fought a civil war in jeans, a white shirt, and red sandals anyway? On the other hand, he also thought Sally looked a little nervous. That couldn’t be a good sign no matter what she had on her feet.
“This is a pleasant surprise,” Sally said when they reached the top of the steps. “You should have told us you were coming, Jack. I would have made some arrangements.”
Almost as soon as she spoke the words, Sally realized the unintended irony of what she had said.
“I guess that was a poor choice of words,” she quickly added. “What I meant was—”
“It’s not important, Mrs. Kitnarok,” Kate interrupted. “We’ve come to see the general. Is he here?”
Sally cut her eyes to Shepherd, almost as if she was asking him to give her the right answer to that question. He nodded slightly, although he really had no idea what that was supposed to mean. Sally seemed satisfied.
“Yes,” she said, “he is. Please come in.”
They mounted the steps and followed Sally down the glass corridor. The last time Shepherd had walked down that corridor it had been lined with small, terracotta sculptures on tall pedestals that looked to him to be museum quality pre-Columbians and a long, obviously custom-made Persian runner covered the floor. Now the corridor was empty and it echoed slightly from their footsteps. He wondered briefly what had become of the sculptures and the Persian runner since he had last been there, which caused him to start thinking about what had become of him since he had last been there, too.
Sally led them into the living room at the end of the corridor. The three of them took seats on three off-white couches arranged in a U-shape facing the interior courtyard. They each selected a separate couch and Shepherd smiled at the unintended symbolism. Mutt and Jeff split apart. One moved to a spot along the wall behind them from which he could watch the corridor running back to the front door, and the other took up a position on the front wall so that his field of view covered the opposite direction.
Sally remained in the doorway. She was clearly nervous and stood rubbing her hands together in a cartoonish-looking gesture.
“Well,” she said eventually, “let me get Charlie. He’s upstairs.”
***
NOBODY SAID ANYTHING while Sally was gone. The only sound in the room was the ticking of a clock from somewhere. Shepherd looked around and didn’t see a clock, which made him begin to hope that the ticking he could hear actually was a clock.
Shepherd glanced at Kate and she returned his glance without expression. He was clueless as to what she was thinking. Keur stared off toward the swimming pool and didn’t look at either one of them.
If something unpleasant were going to happen, it would happen now.
Mutt and Jeff seemed to sense the same thing. Shepherd could hear them shifting around slightly, presumably improving their defensive positions.
But nothing happened. Shepherd just kept list
ening to that damned ticking and wondering where the clock was.
After only a few minutes, probably less than five, Sally returned.
“Jack,” she said, “Charlie would like to see you alone first.”
Shepherd glanced at Kate, but she gave no sign she had even heard. Her face was so still that she might have been sitting there entirely alone.
“He’s upstairs in his study,” Sally prompted.
When no one else reacted or said anything, Shepherd nodded slowly and stood up.
“This way,” Sally said, and he followed her out of the living room.
FIFTY-SIX
CHARLIE WAS DIRECTLY across from the doorway when Shepherd walked in. He was wearing a green golf shirt and jeans and sitting in one of a matched pair of red leather chairs that flanked a Chinese chest on a red and blue Persian carpet. The whole arrangement was positioned in front of a wall of glass with an unobstructed panorama of the Andaman Sea.
Shepherd walked over and sat down in the vacant chair.
“Hello, Charlie.”
Very slowly, Charlie turned his head away from the windows. Shepherd thought he looked a lot older than the last time he had seen him. He appeared drawn and weary, like a man recovering from an unpleasant illness.
“What the fuck is going on?”
“That’s funny,” Shepherd said. “I was going to ask you the very same question.”
“I don’t answer to you.”
“That’s true. You don’t.”
“You show up unannounced at my house, and you bring that woman here without warning me. I thought you were my friend.”
“I am your friend, Charlie. If I weren’t your friend, I wouldn’t be here.”
Charlie grunted and waved one hand dismissively.
“Kate is my friend, too, Charlie. You have to understand that.”
Charlie grunted again and looked away. Then abruptly he stood up.
“You want a cigar, Jack?”
Shepherd didn’t want a cigar, but saying no didn’t seem the thing to do so he nodded. “Yeah, a cigar would be nice.”
Charlie went over to the floor-to-ceiling bookshelves lining the two sides of the room that weren’t glass and pulled on a thick, bronze handle mounted at chest height. A cupboard built into the bookshelves opened and Shepherd could see that it was filled with boxes of cigars. When Charlie came back he was carrying two Cohiba Espléndidos, each one the size of a child’s arm. Shepherd had heard somewhere that Cohiba Espléndidos were Fidel Castro’s favorite cigar. He hoped that wasn’t a bad sign.
A cutter and a box of cedar Davidoff cigar matches lay on the Chinese chest between their chairs next to a big glass ashtray. Charlie handed one of the cigars to Shepherd and then sat back down. He carefully sliced the end off his cigar, inspected the cut like a pathologist faced with a particularly nasty autopsy, then lit a match and puffed his cigar methodically into life. When he was satisfied, he handed the cutter and the matches to Shepherd and smoked quietly while Shepherd cut and lit his own cigar.
Shepherd took several puffs, stared out the window, and waited for Charlie to break the silence. The sky looked hard. It was a shade of blue so steely it seemed almost belligerent. A single cloud, thin and elongated like the remnants of a smoke signal sent from somewhere very far away, lay just above the horizon.
“You shouldn’t have brought her here, Jack. No good can come of it.”
“Yes, it can. For you as much as for anybody.”
“What are you talking about?”
“The two of you working together can stop this, Charlie. You’re the only ones who can. That’s why Kate is here.”
“Stop what? The government is going to fall, Jack. My people are going to fill the streets until this country stops functioning. Then the government will have to call a new election and I’ll win it. It’s just that simple. There’s nothing to stop.”
“How much does it cost to fill the streets these days, Charlie? That’s what the money Sally picked up was for, wasn’t it? So you could pay for your mob?”
Charlie shrugged and took a long draw on his cigar.
“Is that your best shot, Jack? Because, if it is, you might as well leave now. That’s the way politics works in Thailand. People expect to be paid to demonstrate. Whether they love you or hate you, they still expect to be paid.” He shrugged again. “I don’t mind. I’ve got a lot of money and these people don’t have any. It seems fair enough to me.”
“And what about the AK-47s and the grenades and the plastic explosives you’re giving them? Does that seem fair enough to you, too?”
Charlie chuckled and shook his head. “Get out of here, Jack. Nobody’s giving any of these people weapons. Why would I do that? They’d start a fucking civil war or something.”
“I know about the plane, Charlie. We all know about it. It will be on the ground in about another hour and so that’s all the time we have to shut this thing down. Once they start passing those guns around, it will be too late. Like they say, you can’t put toothpaste back in the tube.”
“What plane? What the fuck you talking about, Jack?”
Shepherd shook his head and looked out the window. If Charlie was just going to sit there and deny everything, they weren’t going to get anywhere. And somewhere downstairs that damned clock was ticking.
“I know all about Blossom Trading. I know about the shipments of weapons you’ve been trying to get into the country. I know about the 737 that will be landing at Phuket in about an hour with one more load. You’re going to kill a lot of innocent people and become the very incarnation of the devil for a lot more. And you’re doing it all to regain power in a country where you’d be elected in a landslide anyway, if you would just let it happen.”
Charlie took the cigar out of his mouth. “I have no fucking idea what you are talking about.”
“Charlie, for God’s sake,” Shepherd snapped at him. “This is me you’re talking to. I sell bullshit. I don’t buy it.”
Charlie began to puff furiously on his cigar.
“You little shit,” he roared. “Who the fuck do you think you are?”
“I am your friend and I—”
“You come into my house and accuse me of smuggling guns into Thailand. You tell me I’m going to start a war here. What kind of man do you think I am?”
“I think you’re a man who wants to rule this country again.”
“I am that, you motherfucker, but this country wants me, too. I don’t need to kill anyone to become prime minister again.”
“What about Somchai? Didn’t your people assassinate him?”
“I had nothing to do with that,” he said. “Nothing.”
“Come on, Charlie. Don’t try to jerk me off here. You think the government’s people tried to kill us in Dubai, so you—”
Charlie started to laugh.
“Give me a fucking break,” he said. “Haven’t you figured that out yet? I thought you were supposed to be a smart guy, Jack. Maybe you’re not. Maybe I’ve been paying you way too much.”
Shepherd looked at Charlie and said nothing.
“That was just a stunt,” Charlie said, shaking his head. “Adnan organized it. We thought it might play well with the media. You know, make me look like a hero and make the government look bad. Like they were trying to assassinate me.”
“Three people were killed, Charlie.”
“I don’t know what went wrong.” Charlie refused to meet Shepherd’s eyes. “Adnan told me everybody was going to use dummy loads, like in the movies. I don’t know anything about that shit. I guess the security guys didn’t understand or something. They had real bullets.”
“So you killed three people for a stunt.”
“I didn’t kill anybody, Jack. My bodyguards killed three people. It was an accident. You know how it is. There’s always somebody who doesn’t get the word.”
“So you’re saying you didn’t order the hit on Somchai in retaliation for the hit on you?”
�
��I just told you, Jack, there was no hit on me.”
“Then who killed Somchai?”
“I have no idea. None.”
Shepherd had the feeling there was something Charlie wasn’t telling him.
“How about Adnan? What happened to him?” he asked.
“I have no idea about that either.”
“I don’t believe you, Charlie.”
Charlie chewed on his cigar.
Fifteen seconds went by.
Then thirty.
“Okay,” he finally said, “I don’t know what actually happened to Adnan. I just know what didn’t happen. Somebody killed him and then beheaded him to make it look like the Muslims did it, but I know it wasn’t them. I’ve got a lot of friends down south. There are some good men there and they tell me the Muslim separatists had nothing to do with killing Adnan. I believe them. I just don’t know who did it.”
“So when I talked to you and told you Adnan was dead—”
“I thought it might be somebody trying to get to me through the people around me. That’s why I insisted you come back to Dubai. I thought you might be next.”
From somewhere outside, Shepherd heard what sounded like several car doors slam. Then an engine started, ran roughly for a moment or two, and caught. The vehicle drove away and Shepherd listened until the sound of its engine died away in the distance. He looked at Charlie.
“Some of my people are here,” Charlie said. “They’re organizing the demonstrations. We want to keep tight control. Make sure nothing gets out of hand.”
“So why are you bringing in arms for your people?”
“I’m not bringing in anything. I swear to God, Jack, I’m not. Somebody has been feeding you a load of crap.”
“Did Sally tell you who came here with me today?”
“Yeah. Kate, her bodyguards, and some other white guy.”
“That white guy is an FBI agent named Keur. He’s been investigating Robert Darling and Blossom Trading.”
“The FBI?” The look on Charlie’s face was one of complete incomprehension. “Why would the FBI care about either one of them?”
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