by Jake Needham
“Vaguely.”
“Two hundred pounds of Portuguese PE-4A was packed into the door panels of a Toyota Landcruiser, but the Kuwaitis got wind of the plot and grabbed the Landcruiser before it made it anywhere near Bush. They also arrested seventeen people who were connected in one way or another with the plan. The two ringleaders eventually admitted to your FBI that they were acting under the instructions of the Iraqi intelligence and they named Yousef as their contact. The batch of plastic explosives they used was identified as having come from Malaysia.”
“That doesn’t mean much,” I said as I sipped at my Heineken. “The stuff could have passed through dozens of hands before it ended up in that Landcruiser.”
“It could have, but it didn’t. Do you remember the attempted bombing of the Israeli Embassy in Bangkok?”
“No.”
“That was in 1994. A stolen water truck packed with explosives was in a traffic accident very close to the Israeli Embassy and the Arab-looking man who was driving it abandoned the truck in the street and ran away. The police towed it off and never bothered to look inside, at least they didn’t until it began to smell. When they finally opened the back, they found the decomposing body of the truck’s owner and enough explosives to take a square kilometer out of the middle of Bangkok. We can put Yousef in the room in the Nana Hotel where the detonator was built and the bomb assembled.”
All of a sudden Kate was hitting a little close to home. The Nana Hotel is a third-rate tourist dump immediately across the street from a complex of go-go bars and burger joints where every western male in Bangkok has gone at least a few times, although most refuse to admit to it.
“Then after that came Project Bojinka,” Kate said while I was still trying to calculate the exact distance between the Nana Hotel and my apartment in Chidlom Place.
“I don’t know anything about that either.”
“You don’t know much about what’s been going on in Asia, do you?” Kate gave me a sharp look. “Where in the world have you been, Jack?”
“In Washington,” I answered reflexively, then laughed in spite of myself at what I had just said.
“Yousef built up a terrorist cell in Manila,” Kate went on without smiling. “They rented an apartment there in late 1994 and planned to assassinate the Pope when he came to Manila in early 1995. When Yousef was preparing the explosives, he made a mistake and started a fire. He and the others fled the apartment, leaving behind a laptop computer containing his plans to hijack eleven American commercial aircraft flying over the Pacific on a single day.”
“It’s a lousy excuse, I know, Kate, but no one in Washington pays much attention to what happens in Southeast Asia these days. After China and maybe Japan, the rest of Asia just isn’t on anyone’s radar anymore.”
Kate just sat and shook her head slowly for a moment. When she continued, her voice was tinged with exasperation.
“The files on the laptop made it clear that Yousef was planning to crash the planes into high-profile targets in the United States, including CIA headquarters in Washington.”
I blinked at that, but I didn’t say anything.
“Ramzi Yousef was an Iraqi intelligence agent,” Kate said, watching my eyes as she spoke. “We know it and so does your CIA. They just won’t admit it publicly.”
“Are you trying to tell me the Iraqis were responsible for September 11? That Dick Chaney was right?”
“I don’t know that. Anyway, that’s not the point I’m making now.”
“Then I guess you’re going to have to spell it out for me, Kate. What is your point?”
“Look, Jack, all those big Iraqi operations during the nineties had their roots in Southeast Asia. The reason for that was the Iraqis were developing a deeply entrenched, anti-western terrorist network in Asia that would survive no matter what happened anywhere else. They may have succeeded at precious little otherwise, but they succeeded at that.”
“That’s pretty hard for me to believe.”
“Is it? Think about this. Yousef’s operation to hijack the eleven American planes was financed by a Malaysian company called Konsojaya that was fronted by a shareholder list drawn from the highest levels of Malaysian business and government. If Yousef was an Iraqi intelligence officer, then almost certainly Konsojaya was actually a cover for Iraqi intelligence and it was deeply tied into the political and military power structures in Malaysia.”
“Even if that’s true, so what? That was a long time ago.”
“Was it?” Kate asked. “In January 2000, Malaysian intelligence monitored a meeting in Kuala Lumpur between two of the directors of Konsojaya and two of the men who flew the planes into your World Trade Center on September 11 of the following year.”
“Then you are saying the Iraqis were behind the attack on the World Trade Center. That this company in Malaysia had something to do with it.”
“It might well be true, but that’s not what I’m telling you.”
“Then for Christ’s sakes, what are you telling me, Kate?” Now I was the one with the exasperation in my voice. “What had all this cloak-and-dagger Iraqi terrorist stuff got to do with Plato Karsarkis? The Iraqi intelligence service is dead and buried now. Nobody cares anymore even if once upon a time they might have had some connection with the September 11 hijackers.”
“Plato Karsarkis sold smuggled oil for the Iraqis. Sedco, the Panamanian company brokering the sales, sold oil to Konsojaya. Then Konsojaya resold the oil to the Malaysian National Oil Company at a handsome profit and accumulated a lot of cash. Think about that carefully, Jack. Directors of the same company that was buying Iraqi oil from Plato Karsarkis and reselling it at a huge profit were meeting with the terrorists who flew planes into the World Trade Center on September 11. Do you think that was just a coincidence?”
Suddenly it seemed very quiet. I could hear the waters of the gulf scrapping the pilings twenty feet below and I listened to a seagull calling from somewhere very far away.
“What we don’t know,” Kate went on, “is exactly why that oil went through Konsojaya. Karsarkis claims he was working under instructions from the White House, but if he was, why would he have been arranging for a company linked to Iraqi intelligence to accumulate cash in Malaysia?”
“Because his story is bullshit?”
“Maybe, but then it might also be true. We know anti-western terrorists now have significant financial and banking operations in this region, so who knows what was really going on?”
“Perhaps—” I began, but Kate cut me off.
“Along the way Karsarkis could well have acquired an intimate knowledge of at least the financial aspects of terrorist operations in this region, possibly even some indications of what future operation plans may exist.”
Then I saw where this was all going.
“You think those are the people who are after Karsarkis, don’t you?” I said. “Not the marshals. You think someone killed Mike O’Connell because he knew what Karsarkis knows about terrorist operations in Asia, and now these same people are going after Karsarkis himself.”
Kate said nothing. She didn’t have to.
“But what about those email intercepts you gave me?” I asked. “Those weren’t intercepts of some terrorist cell. They were emails originating from the United States marshals and they seemed clear enough to me. Somebody was talking about killing Karsarkis, even if they were being very subtle about it.”
“Yes,” Kate admitted, “I don’t understand that either.”
“So what are you telling me here? That the poor bastard has both a band of Asian terrorists and the US marshals gunning for him at the same time?”
“That could be.”
“Is Karsarkis aware of any of this?” I asked.
Kate gave a little shrug, but she didn’t say anything.
“Does he at least know what the marshals might be up to?”
“I don’t think so,” she said
“I don’t see how he could be. He’d hardly be so keen o
n going back to Washington if he knew the friendly feds were out to punch his ticket.”
“Maybe they aren’t,” Kate said. “At least not all of them. I think the protection of the United States government is the only chance Plato Karsarkis has to survive. If you don’t take him in, if you can’t find a safe haven for him in the US, he’s lost.”
I started to object to the you thing, but I decided it wasn’t worth the effort and let it go.
“You said you would consider helping Plato after you read our files, Jack. I’ve let you read them, and now I’ve told you more than I should about some things that aren’t in them. I need to know what you’re going to do. I need to know now.”
“What do you want me to do?”
“The same thing Plato wants you to do.”
I noticed that Kate had begun calling the man Plato, just like Anita had begun doing on very short acquaintance. The old bastard was a real babe magnet. No doubt about that.
“Plato has asked you to file an application for a presidential pardon on his behalf, Jack, and he wants you to use your White House contacts to push it through. He’s not going back to the United States any other way.”
“Except dead.”
“There’s that.”
“And you want him alive.”
“We want him in safe hands. We want him willing to tell what he knows. We want to hear from him exactly how much danger we are in here in Asia, and we think he knows.”
“Then why not just ask him?”
“He’s not going to give up whatever he knows for nothing, Jack. You know better than that.”
“Then arrest him and send him back. Problem solved. Right?”
Kate tried to keep her face expressionless and mostly she succeeded, but for just an instant I could see the embarrassment as it passed behind her eyes.
“That’s not an option,” she said. “You of all people ought to understand that.”
I did understand that. I didn’t like it, but I understood it.
Corruption ran deep in Thailand and there were too many people eating off Karsarkis’ table for an arrest to be in the cards. I rubbed my hands over my face and thought about what Kate was asking me to do.
“This is all a hell of a mess,” I said after a while.
“Yes,” she agreed. “It is.”
“Even if I was inclined to try and get the White House to pardon Karsarkis, I don’t think I could pull it off. Nobody has that many favors to call in.”
“Plato thinks you do. So do I.”
I let that pass without comment. There was something else I needed to ask Kate about. I didn’t really want to ask, but I knew eventually I was going to have to, so I took a deep breath and just plunged it.
“Do you have any personal reason for caring whether or not Karsarkis gets a pardon?”
I had to know if Kate was acting solely out of conviction or if there was another reason. Karsarkis obviously owned a lot of powerful politicians and other public figures in Thailand and there were many ways to own people. The crude way was to buy them, but there were other subtler ways and even the possibility of webs of personal loyalties that I could never hope to understand.
Kate looked at me for a long time in complete silence. I just looked back. I didn’t bat an eye. I had been in Asia far too long to be ashamed of asking that kind of question.
“First, Jack, please understand this: I have never taken anything from Karsarkis or from anyone else. There are still a few honest people in government here and I’m one of them. Second, I’m not sleeping with Plato now and I’m not going to be in the future. Whether you help Karsarkis or not, I want you to know both of those things are true.”
I nodded. I wanted to believe Kate and I did. I saw no reason not to.
“There is a lot at stake here,” she continued. “Karsarkis may know a great deal about terrorist operations in Asia that threaten all of us. If your people get him back in one piece and he gives them what he has, that would be a good thing for all of us. We need to know what he knows.”
“I guess they could always make it a condition of the pardon that he come clean.”
“You already know they can’t. Under your Constitution a presidential pardon is unconditional. Karsarkis can promise them anything he wants in order to get it, but if he doesn’t deliver, they can’t take it back. His help has got to come from genuine good will. If he promises to tell you what he knows just to get his pardon and then you give him one and he laughs at you and says he’s changed his mind, what are you going to do about it?”
“Have the marshals kill him?” I suggested.
Kate didn’t smile at that. Perhaps she didn’t think it was all that funny.
“Giving Plato Karsarkis a pardon would be difficult for your president politically,” she said. “That’s why Karsarkis needs you. The White House owes you, Jack. You delivered big for them not very long ago. You even made you friend Mr. Redwine quite the hero. He’s the White House counsel. Pardon applications are filed with his office. And he owes you now.”
“You’re assuming an awful lot.”
“I don’t think so.”
I took a deep breath and looked away. The thunderclouds were coming closer and I heard the first rumbling in the distance. After a minute or two, my eyes drifted back to Kate.
“If I’m going to represent Karsarkis,” I said, “I need to know everything.”
“All you need to know is what I’ve just told you.”
“That’s not enough.”
“It ought to be. Mike O’Connell probably knew everything and look what happened to him.”
“No, there’s something else,” I said. “Something specific.”
“What is it?”
“Did Karsarkis kill that girl? Did he cut Cynthia Kim’s throat in that hotel room in Washington?”
Kate sat back and folded her arms. “I don’t know,” she said quietly. “I really don’t know. He may have.”
We sat for a while in silence after that, both of us watching the storm build. There was still food on my plate, but I had pretty much lost my appetite.
Kate’s story about Karsarkis’ shadowy connections and his knowledge of terrorist operations in Asia might well have been nothing but a lot of horseshit, something she had concocted to make me feel okay about helping a traitor and a murderer. Still, I had no doubt she really did want me to help Karsarkis get his presidential pardon and the reasons she was giving me for that were no doubt at least partially true.
I took my time about finishing my beer and tried to appear thoughtful, although looking back, I’m not sure why I even bothered. I had known what I would eventually say almost from the moment Kate had started spinning her tales of spies and terrorists and secret money trails leading to Asia. I had always been a complete sucker for stuff like that.
“Look,” I finally told Kate, “let me talk to Karsarkis again. If I’m satisfied he deserves a pardon, maybe I’ll take him on.”
Men are, on the whole, foolish and predictable creatures. I’d had no problem at all looking Karsarkis right in the eye and telling him to shove off when he asked me to get the president to pardon him. Then Kate had asked me to do exactly the same thing and I had gone all goo-goo and said, ‘Oh, sure, whatever you want.’
Kate flashed me one of those smiles Thai women keep in reserve, but she didn’t say another word. She knew she didn’t have to.
Smart woman, I thought to myself. Quitting when she was ahead.
Was I ever going to learn to do that?
Probably not.
THE END
Phuket
“The greatest trick the Devil ever pulled
was convincing the world he didn’t exist.”
—Verbal Kint
The Usual Suspects
THIRTY SIX
THE MORNING AFTER my lunch with Kate I woke up early. Way too early.
After making some coffee I stood at the window and watched the air glowing purple with a false dawn. When the
sun finally appeared at the horizon, it turned the whole world the color of freshly spun cotton candy. I drank coffee for a while and watched the city ooze to life. Then I ate a bowl of raisin bran, shoved a few things into a duffle bag, and took a cab to the airport.
I hadn’t bothered to call for a reservation. There were flights from Bangkok to Phuket almost every hour and getting a seat was never much of a problem. Sure enough, the nine-o’clock flight had plenty of room and I was in Phuket just after ten. By ten-thirty I was pulling onto the highway for the drive to Patong Beach in a black Jeep Cherokee I had rented from Avis.
When CW and I met at the Paradise Bar—back in a time that now felt at least a century ago although it had really been just a couple of weeks—he told me he was staying at the Holiday Inn. If CW was in Phuket now, and I had no doubt he was, I would bet my last dollar he was still there. Besides, the Holiday Inn was always the first place you looked for Americans in Phuket.
I had barely driven up the hotel’s circular driveway and climbed out of the Cherokee when I heard his voice.
“Goddamn, Slick,” he bellowed. “What the fuck you doing here?”
I followed the sound across the open-air lobby and found CW nursing what looked like a cup of coffee in an otherwise empty bar. When I walked over and sat down across from him I saw he was puffy and drawn. He looked like he had aged ten years since I had seen him last.
“What’s wrong, CW? You look like somebody shot your dog.”
“I ain’t got a dog.”
I nodded at that, waiting, but CW didn’t say anything else.
“No progress on Karsarkis?” I prompted.
“Ah, son of a bitch,” he muttered. “I am so damned tired of that little pissant I’d like to go in and just string him up on a palm tree. Then at least I could get home to Dallas.”
I raised my eyebrows at the implication, but CW was staring into his coffee cup and didn’t notice. Besides, I doubted irony was a big part of his conversational repertoire.
“Forget about Karsarkis for a couple of hours then,” I said. “You like barbeque?”