THE KING OF MACAU (The Jack Shepherd International Crime Novels)

by Needham, Jake

  “Would it make any difference if I told you that your story is wrong?” I asked, mostly for form.

  “Of course. I would include your denial in it.”

  “But you would run it anyway.”

  “Yes. I trust my source.”

  I sighed. Screwed was screwed, wasn’t it?

  So I stood up and offered her my hand.

  “Okay, Cindy. It’s been real.”

  She didn’t reply. She just stood and shook my hand and smiled the sort of smile that said the conversation had gone exactly the way she had thought it would. Then she turned and left the office.

  Well, fuck a goddamned duck, I sat there thinking when she was gone. I’m toast.

  “CALM DOWN, JACK,” PETE Logan kept saying when I finally got him on the telephone. “Just calm down.”

  “This is calm!”

  “Well, man, I got to say you really don’t sound calm to me.”

  “I don’t? Then, fuck you, Pete. It’s not your name that’s going to be in the South China Morning Post tomorrow. This is calm for knowing that every triad gangster in Hong Kong and Macau is going to learn over their morning coffee that I’m being paid to nail their skinny butts.”

  “In my experience, Jack, most triad gangsters don’t drink coffee, so it seems to me you’ve really got nothing at all to worry about.”

  “Very fucking funny. Go ahead, joke about it. There’s a leak somewhere, Pete, and all the shit that’s squirting out is going to land on my head, not on yours.”

  “The leak isn’t here, Jack.”

  “How can you be so sure?”

  “Because I’m the only guy here who knows what you’re doing.”

  “And it wasn’t you?”

  “And it wasn’t me.”

  I thought about that for a moment but it got me nowhere.

  “But why would anyone at MGM leak it?” I asked Pete. “They certainly wouldn’t want something like this to get out.”

  “Beats me.”

  Something suddenly occurred to me. “You said you were going to talk to Wynn and Adelson. Maybe one of them put the word out to mess with Pansy.”

  “That might make sense,” Pete said, “except for one thing.”

  “What’s that?”

  “I haven’t talked to either one of them yet.”

  “So you’re saying that nobody but the two of us and the MGM people know about the money spike at the MGM?”

  “Nobody I’m aware of.”

  “And that nobody but the two of us and the MGM people know anything about me being hired to find out about it?”

  “That’s what I’m saying.”

  “So you didn’t tell anybody?”

  “I didn’t tell anybody.”

  “Well…shit.”

  That almost certainly meant somebody at MGM had been Cindy’s source, but…why? Did somebody on the inside there have it in for Pansy? Was that what the leak was all about? Company politics? Strange…

  My mind suddenly leaped to another strange occurrence in Macau.

  “Have you ever heard of a guy named Harry Pine?” I asked Pete.

  “Harry Pine?” Pete either thought about it, or made a show of thinking about it. “No, I don’t think so. Why do you ask?”

  “He’s a guy who introduced himself to me in Macau for no particular reason. It seemed to me there was something a little off about him.”

  “Did you tell him why you were there?”

  “I’m not even going to bother to answer that, Pete.”

  “Well…if you didn’t, I don’t see how he has anything to do with your problem.”

  “My problem? My problem? Well, fuck you very much, Pete. Maybe I’ll catch the next plane for Monte Carlo and it can be your problem.”

  “Don’t be so touchy, Jack. You know what I meant.”

  “Yeah, I know exactly what you meant. Tomorrow a whole army of violent gangsters is going to be told I’m trying to put them in the frame for a big-time money laundering scheme, and you’re going to be sitting in some Bangkok go-go bar watching the girls and having a good chuckle about it. I could always call Cindy and tell her about your involvement here and we can both go out together. Put a sort of a Butch and Sundance finish to this whole fiasco? What do you think?”

  “Who’s Cindy?”

  “The South China Morning Post reporter who has the story.”

  “You screwing her?”

  “Pete, I only met her a half hour ago.”

  “Doesn’t rule it out.”

  “This conversation is falling apart.”

  “Good-bye, Jack. Let me know when you come up with something useful.”

  “I’ll call you from the hospital,” I said, “assuming I make it that far.”

  I HAD TWO MORE calls to make.

  My first was to Pansy. She needed to prepare herself before somebody told her about that story in the SCMP or, worse, she stumbled over it herself. It wasn’t going to go down well with her. Her worst fear was that the money laundering MGM was experiencing would have triad links, and that the mud would stick to her even though she had nothing to do with it.

  Now the whole story was going public, and before we knew what the real source of the activity was or even if it really was a money laundering operation. Pansy was going to get a bucket of mud right in the face and I doubted she would ever be able to wash it off, no matter what we eventually found out.

  I called her office rather than her cell phone because I didn’t want to dump all this on her at an awkward moment. It was going to go down hard enough and I didn’t want her to have to deal with it at an awkward time. I had seen too many men answering cell phones while peeing into a urinal to be comfortable delivering difficult news over one. I wasn’t actually concerned that Pansy would answer her phone while sitting on the toilet, of course, but the principle there was still pretty much the same.

  I wanted Pansy’s full attention when I broke the news to her and I wanted it at a time when she wasn’t distracted by other things. So I called her office and left a message that it was urgent and she should call me back when she was able to talk. That was about as much hint as I could give her that this wasn’t going to be a fun phone call without saying something like, Yo, baby, you are about to become the triad’s babe of the day on the front page of the South China Morning Post.

  Pansy called back in less than ten minutes and I told her about Cindy Cheung and the story that the SCMP was running tomorrow without trying to soften the blow. She took it better than I thought she would. She made some listening noises while I talked, but when I finished she said nothing at all.

  When the silence had stretched out to the point of embarrassment, she suddenly spoke up.

  “Do you ever wonder if it’s all worth it, Jack?”

  “I’m not sure what you mean, Pansy.”

  I knew exactly what she meant, of course, but I didn’t think admitting it right away was the thing to do. I really didn’t want Pansy to feel as lousy as she obviously did so I tried to end the conversation on a comforting and cheery note. That’s what I tried to do, but I felt like what I actually did was murmur a lot of stupid platitudes and make an ass out of myself.

  MY SECOND CALL WAS to a guy named Archie Ward.

  Archie isn’t an easy guy to get in touch with. He may be the guy who knows everything that’s happening almost anywhere in Asia, but he isn’t a guy who answers his phone. Actually, I’m not even sure he has a phone. Well, of course, he has a phone, but I don’t have the number and I doubt many other people do either.

  You don’t call Archie. The only way to reach him is to sprinkle some messages around Hong Kong and hope that eventually he calls you back.

  I hadn’t talked to Archie in a while, but I still had a number for what he once told me was his direct line at the main office of the Hongkong and Shanghai Bank, where he claimed half-heartedly to work. The woman who answered told me that Archie Ward no longer worked there, which is exactly what Archie had told me the last t
ime we had spoken, but of course I wasn’t sure that Archie had ever actually worked there so his not working there anymore seemed to be a mixed message at best. Brushing aside the woman’s categorical insistence that she couldn’t help me, I left my name and my office number and asked her to have Archie call.

  I had a couple of other Hong Kong numbers for Archie, too, so I called those, too. One was a mobile that didn’t ring and had apparently been abandoned, but at the other number a woman’s voice answered with a simple, “Yes?”

  I smiled at the sound of the woman’s Australian accent, obvious even in that single word, and told her I was calling for Archie. Before she could protest her ignorance that any such person existed, I gave her my name and number, told her that Archie knew me, and said I needed to talk to him urgently. The woman told me she didn’t have any idea what I was talking about, of course, and I thanked her and hung up.

  After that, all I could do was wait.

  SIXTEEN

  ARCHIE WARD IS A redheaded, pathologically profane Aussie I met a couple of years back when the Hongkong and Shanghai Bank hired me to review some transactions that had an unmistakably ripe odor to them. Large amounts of money were moving back and forth between the bank’s main office in Hong Kong and some of its branches in Europe. The coordinated way the transfers were occurring caused them to suspect that the bank might be unwittingly facilitating some pretty questionable transactions, but they couldn’t figure out what kind of questionable transactions they were.

  Archie was my contact at HSBC. He had been introduced to me as a security consultant for the bank and while we were making small talk he threw out the name of a Washington lawyer I had known for quite a long time. I didn’t think that was accidental so I called the fellow to ask who the hell Archie really was. What he gave Archie was the sort of roundabout endorsement that was the traditional indication that Archie had an official connection of some kind with the intelligence business, but naturally he was vague as to who that connection was with.

  The whole thing felt a little screwy, but I liked Archie, and I had no doubt that he was one of the good guys, so I had given him a hand without asking too many questions. When I eventually traced the transfers to a Greek born arms dealer who operated out of a ritzy beach resort about an hour north of Sydney, it occurred to me that the connection between the source of the transfers and my new pal’s colorful Aussie accent might be something less than a complete coincidence.

  It was pretty obvious to me that Archie wasn’t really employed by HSBC at all. My guess was that Archie actually worked for ASIS, the Australian Secret Intelligence Service, and that HSBC was providing cover for an ASIS investigation. Regardless, following accepted etiquette in such matters, I pretended not to have figured that out and, for his part, Archie pretended not to know that I had.

  Archie called me fairly often after that with questions about corporate finance matters I had always been happy to answer for him. We hadn’t become friends exactly, but something pretty close to it. I had come to trust Archie and I was pretty sure that Archie liked and respected me, too. Once or twice I asked Archie for bits of information and advice, but I was careful not to test our friendship unduly. Archie was a big player of some kind up on the government level. I was only a guy trying to make a living.

  The last time I had talked to Archie was back when the Asian Bank of Commerce was coming apart and threatening to pull me down with it for all sorts of reasons I would just as soon forget about right now. Archie had nudged me in the direction I needed to go to understand exactly what I was up against there. He pretty much saved my butt, to tell the truth. Without his help I would have floundered around until I sunk, and I’m not absolutely certain I would have come up again.

  Back then, Archie told me he had gone independent. He left exactly what that meant a little murky, of course, but I had a pretty good idea. Asia was filled with freelancing spooks who told you they were now in something they usually called the information business. Most of these guys had spent their lives as government employees but, when they saw how many of their contemporaries who had left public service to freelance and were making a pile, they made a grab for their own brass ring. Some of them were ex-CIA, some had once been Mi6, but there were also a bunch of Russians, Frenchmen, Australians, and New Zealanders out there. I even met a guy once who had told me with a perfectly straight face that he had been deputy chief of Icelandic Intelligence. Maybe he had been. That certainly wouldn’t be the strangest resume I had encountered among the kind of guys I had met in Asia, not by a long shot.

  A military man who left the military and became a soldier for hire used to be called a mercenary. Now he was called a security contractor. Pretty much the same thing, of course, without the smell. I wasn’t sure what you called an intelligence officer who left government and went independent. Archie could probably tell me that. I’d have to remember to ask him.

  ABOUT AN HOUR LATER my phone rang.

  “This a clean line, mate?”

  “Hello to you, too, Archie. It’s been quite—”

  “I asked you if this phone is clean.”

  “I’m not exactly calling you about the Iranian nuclear program.”

  “You’re saying you don’t have any idea if it’s clean or not.”

  “Well..ah, I honestly never thought about it. The calls I make on it aren’t really—”

  “One hour. The lobby of the Langham Hotel in Tsim Sha Tsui.”

  “Should I carry—”

  I heard the click of Archie disconnecting.

  “— a folded newspaper?” I finished, but I was talking to myself.

  I guess that’s what you call a spy who goes independent.

  Paranoid.

  ARCHIE MATERIALIZED BEHIND ME as soon as I walked into the Langham’s rather grand lobby. He put a hand lightly on my shoulder and spoke in a voice that didn’t carry much further than my left ear.

  “Christ, as I live and breathe. It’s Jack Shepherd in the flesh. You’re looking well, mate.”

  “You, too, Archie.”

  “Had lunch yet?”

  I shook my head and Archie pointed toward a pair of glass doors to the left of the reception desk.

  I followed him across the marble floored lobby, remaining silent in deference to his apparent disinterest in public conversation. We went down some steps and through another door, and a minute or two later we were seated in a back booth in the Langham’s Main Street Deli. Archie was facing the door, of course, with the wall behind him. I didn’t know if there was something up or if he was only doing it out of habit. I didn’t ask. I figured he would tell me if he wanted to.

  “BEST CORNED BEEF SANDWICH in Asia, mate. Makes me old fella twitch thinking about it.”

  Archie was something of a professional Australian, at least he was when he wanted to be. Most of the time he used his accent and a barrage of picturesque Australian expressions to camouflage himself in plain sight as just another colorful Aussie larrikin. He looked the part, too. Average height, lean and weathered with a bad haircut, he had a long, thin face that looked like a dropped pie. He was wearing a blue dress shirt with the sleeves rolled up, neatly pressed jeans, and a gold Rolex that probably didn’t cost any more than your average Mercedes.

  At a glance, Archie would probably strike most people as an easy-going, working-class guy, one of those fellows having a beer and a laugh down at the pub after a hard day’s work in some dead-end job. He could have been a jackaroo on horseback or a rigger on the Sydney Harbour Bridge. He could have been, but he wasn’t.

  I had heard some stories about Archie, and I believed every one of them. When the Aussie accent was peeled away and the harmless prankster pose was back in storage, what you had left was a hard guy who knew his way around the back alleys of Asia. He knew where the bodies were buried, which made sense because he had buried a lot of them.

  “You’ve obviously been doing okay,” I said, inclining my head toward his watch.

  “Fair din
kum, matey.”

  “Filling your empty hours then?”

  “I reckon. I’ve been as busy as a cat burying shit. How’s yourself?”

  “Gettin’ by. Practicing law in my own special way.”

  Archie nodded and offered a sleepy-looking smile. “Heard you lost a client recently.”

  If anybody other than Archie had said that, I would have assumed they were referring to Plato Karsarkis because of all the publicity that case had gotten. But I had no doubt at all that Archie was talking about Charlie Kitnarok, the former prime minister of Thailand who, for my sins, I had tried to help with some of his financial dealings and darn near got sucked into a civil war in the bargain. My involvement with Charlie hadn’t been publicly mentioned anywhere as far as I knew. Which was exactly why Archie would know all about it.

  “I’ve still got one or two clients left,” I said. “You enjoying yourself these days?”

  “Bloody oath! Finally making a quid, too. All me mates thought I’d gone troppo when I quit, but—”

  “You’re going to have to translate that one for me, Archie.”

  He grinned again. “Means catching a bit of tropical fever from being in Asia too long. Like the heat has gotten to me.”

  “More likely the women.”

  “Got no idea what you’re talking about,” Archie grinned. “No idea at all.”

  “Look, Archie, let me tell you about—”

  “Reckon we ought to order first, mate. I’m so hungry I could eat the arse out of a low flyin’ duck.”

  Archie waved for a waiter and ordered a corned beef on rye with Russian dressing, coleslaw, and potato salad. I had a pastrami on rye with mustard. We both ordered cream sodas. We could have been having lunch in Brooklyn, but we weren’t. We were in the basement of one of Hong Kong’s finest hotels and we were the only two guys in the room who weren’t Chinese. I guess this was what people meant when they talked about internationalization.

  WE MADE SMALL TALK until the food came, then we made more small talk while we ate. We were waltzing around so much I started worrying that one of us would fall asleep before we got to the point of the lunch. So, when Archie popped the last crust of rye bread into his mouth, I told him why I had called.