KILLING PLATO (A Jack Shepherd crime thriller)

by Jake Needham

  Shepherd hated the souk. Every time he entered its cramped tangle of tiny passageways, some so narrow they were more like cracks between buildings than places to walk, he felt like a guy in a horror movie, the one who never figures out the axe murderer is standing right behind him until it’s too late. Shepherd was certain that a malevolent beast lived somewhere deep inside the souk. The place made his skin crawl.

  Charlie didn’t seem to feel any of that. He strolled the souk as if he owned it, and maybe he did. He certainly could afford it. According to Forbes, Charlie Kitnarok was the world’s ninety-eighth richest man. And that was just counting the stuff they knew about.

  Shepherd was Charlie’s lawyer. He knew about the other stuff.

  At least he knew about a lot of the other stuff. Maybe even he didn’t know about everything. Charlie was a man who took pleasure in secrets and he had a great many of them. Shepherd doubted there was anybody alive who knew all of the things Charlie was involved in.

  Possibly not even Charlie.

  CHARLIE LED THE way with Shepherd walking next to him. The CNN camera crew took up a position about thirty feet behind them and the driver and the security man brought up the rear. They entered the souk and the gloom closed in. Split and pitted concrete walls rose up on both sides of them. Iron pipes and black rubber electrical cables snaked haphazardly back and forth over their heads and air conditioners buzzed and dripped from somewh뀀 of theere above. Metal handcarts piled with bulging burlap sacks and heavily taped brown cartons rattled past them in both directions.

  Fifty feet inside the souk the alleyway made a sharp turn to the left and they passed a narrow shop with mounds of car batteries piled head-high behind a stained and dusty window. In front of the shop two men dressed in dishdashas, the long white shirt-dress that is the preferred attire of locals in Dubai, sat on upturned wooded boxes smoking cigarettes. Their dark eyes tracked Charlie and Shepherd as the little procession passed.

  “Where are we going, Charlie?”

  “Nowhere. Just walking.”

  It didn’t feel to Shepherd like they were just walking. It felt more like they were going somewhere, but he had no idea where. Still, Charlie was his client, his only client if he were being completely honest, and no matter how tired he was that was a boat Shepherd had absolutely no intention of rocking. So he nodded and said nothing.

  Charlie took a heavy-framed pair of tortoiseshell sunglasses from his jacket pocket and slipped them on. The lenses were so dark they were almost black. Shepherd wondered why Charlie was putting on sunglasses when the light around them was already so dim he felt like he was walking under water.

  A few minutes later they rounded a sharp bend, slipped past a tall stack of odd smelling burlap bags, and emerged into a rectangular courtyard. The courtyard didn’t have much to recommend it as a destination, but something about it made Shepherd wonder if it was the place they had been heading all along.

  It was about eighty feet long and twenty-five feet wide with narrow shophouses walling off all four sides. There was some kind of merchandise stacked in front of most of them. Brightly colored spices sealed in clear plastic cylinders the size of barrels; concrete packed in heavy red-and-blue striped paper bags; hundreds of pairs of slippers arranged by color on aluminum racks; wooden cases the size of refrigerators lettered in red Korean characters; and tan cardboard cartoons tightly bound with white plastic straps. The only exit was another narrow passageway at the opposite end.

  Two men brushed by them walking in the direction from which they had just come. The first man was Iranian-looking, clean-shaven and wearing a dark suit with a white shirt buttoned at the neck. The other man wore a dishdasha and a blue Yankees baseball cap. Both men were talking on mobile telephones and Shepherd wondered briefly if they were talking to each other.

  Charlie was a half step ahead of Shepherd, walking just in front of his right shoulder. They were almost exactly in the center of the rectangular space when Charlie turned his head as if he was about to say something. Whatever he was going to say, he never got the chance.

  The shots came from behind them.

  In the confined space of the courtyard, they sounded like mortar fire.

  A WORLD OF TROUBLE

  TWO

  SHEPHERD REACTED BY instinct. He pushed Charlie behind two pallets piled high with burlap-wrapped bales and dived on top of him. The bales were stacked about four feet high and looked pretty solid. Shepherd had no idea what was in them, but he hoped to hell whatever it was would stop bullets.

  Shepherd scrambled to his knees and took a quick glance over the bales.

  The Iranian-looking man who had brushed past them was standing in front of an open-fro뀀led to hisnted shop with a sign in English over the door: SALEM ALI BAKERY. He was holding a .45 in his left hand with his right hand wrapped over the bottom of the grip. His feet were planted a shoulder-width apart, his knees bent, and his shoulders back. He looked like a model demonstrating the Weaver stance for a handgunner’s manual.

  “What the fuck you doing, Jack?” Charlie bellowed.

  The gunman shifted the muzzle toward the sound of Charlie’s voice and fired twice. Shepherd ducked back unharmed, but he didn’t hear the shots thumping into the bags or ricocheting off the concrete behind them and he wondered about that for a moment.

  That guy must be the world’s worst shot, he thought. But even lousy shots get lucky, so Shepherd stayed as low as he could.

  “Any more questions, Charlie?”

  “Yeah. Why would anyone want to kill you, Jack?”

  “Very fucking funny.”

  Shepherd glanced over his shoulder. They were near the center of the courtyard and there was very little behind them but a narrow walkway disappearing into the gloom between a mobile phone dealer and a warehouse.

  “What’s going on here, Charlie?”

  “How should I know?”

  “Somebody’s trying to kill you and you have no idea why? What are you into that I don’t know about?”

  “Nothing, Jack. Nothing at all.”

  Bullshit, Shepherd thought.

  Charlie may have once been a military man, but the Thai army didn’t do much fighting so Shepherd doubted Charlie was any more comfortable under fire than he was. Still, Charlie looked calm enough to him. More annoyed than frightened really.

  What the hell is happening here? Shepherd asked himself. And why isn’t Charlie more disturbed about it?

  Shepherd took another glance over the bales and this time he didn’t draw fire. The Iranian-looking gunman’s full attention had shifted to the opposite end of the courtyard where Charlie’s driver and security man had suddenly appeared with the CNN crew right behind them. It looked to Shepherd like they were all about to be famous, although whether their fame would be posthumous was still an open question.

  The security man didn’t hesitate. His weapon was out in front of him in a two-handed grip and he charged straight at the shooter, firing as he ran. The driver pulled a handgun, too, and slid to his left, blasting away. The gunman took two steps back, firing at first one man then the other as he retreated. Then all at once he dropped straight down like a puppet whose strings had been cut.

  The security man took a few more strides, kicked the gunman’s gun out of his hand, and dived behind a pile of cardboard cartons. Across the courtyard, the driver flattened himself against the wooden crates with the Korean writing.

  For a moment, everything stopped.

  No more than twenty feet beyond where the gunman sprawled in the courtyard, the CNN cameraman had his camera up and his eye pressed to the viewfinder. All Shepherd could see of the man behind the camera was a blue baseball cap with CNN in red letters above the bill, a denim jacket, wrinkled blue jeans, and a pair of blue-and-white athletic shoes. The soundman was just to the cameraman’s right, arms straight out in front of him, a black microphone dangling from a short aluminum pole gripped i뀀athleticn both hands. Slightly behind the cameraman and to his left, hovered the
producer. She was wearing a khaki safari jacket and khaki pants tucked into the tops of brown work boots. She had short blond hair, a rosy complexion, and eyes the color of jade.

  As Shepherd watched, the woman sank slowly to her knees and pressed her hands together in front of her face. She looked as if she was so emotionally overcome by the sight of a man shot to death right in front of her that she had been moved to prayer. Then Shepherd spotted the dark stain on the woman’s safari jacket, right in the center of her chest.

  She tilted her head down and examined the stain. Her mouth opened and closed, but no sound came out. Gradually she slumped forward, twisted slightly to her right, and laid her cheek gently against the dirty concrete of the courtyard. A bubble of red formed on her lips, popped, and slid onto the ground. She didn’t move again.

  A WORLD OF TROUBLE

  THREE

  SHEPHERD GOT HIS feet underneath him and grabbed Charlie by the arm.

  “What are you doing?” Charlie asked.

  “We’re getting the hell out of here!”

  “Just stay put, Jack.”

  “We don’t know how many gunmen there are, Charlie. They may be others, and they may have automatic weapons or even grenades. Your guys don’t have anything but handguns.”

  “You think too much.” Charlie got his own feet under him and started to stand up. “Just stay where you are and—”

  A fresh volley of shots cut Charlie off. Shepherd grabbed him and jerked him back down, but Charlie’s feet slid out from under him and he went head first into the bales. Shepherd heard the hollow sound of Charlie’s head bouncing off the wooden pallet. His sunglasses flew off and caromed away across the courtyard. Charlie sat up grunting in pain and lifted both hands to his face. A thick line of blood appeared across his forehead.

  It was the blood that made up Shepherd’s mind.

  Dragging Charlie behind him, he duck-walked behind the bales until they made it to the nearest shophouse. Inside was a single, large room filled almost to the ceiling with more burlap-wrapped bales just like the ones outside. Shepherd pulled Charlie toward the back.

  There was a door. He grabbed the handle.

  Locked, damn it.

  Shepherd pushed hard on the door with his free hand. It gave slightly but didn’t open. He stepped back, lifted his foot, and slammed it into the wood beside the lock. The door popped open as smoothly as if he had opened it with a key. Shepherd gave Charlie a quick glance. He seemed dazed and the bleeding had gotten worse. Keeping a tight grip on his arm, Shepherd pulled him into the alley behind the shophouse. He had no idea where they were going, but he had to keep them moving.

  A right and two lefts brought them into another courtyard. It looked a lot like the one in which they had just been ambushed, but it wasn’t. There was a shadowy passageway at the opposite end right next to a windowless stucco building exactly the color of sand. Shepherd headed straight for it. The gloom of the souk was now their friend. If Shepherd could lose them in it, they would probably be safe. He tightened his grip on Charlie and pulled him along.

  THEY WENT ON like that thr뀀uld probabough the twisting passageways of the souk, making random turns every so often. Shepherd thought they were moving further and further away from the place where they had been attacked, but he wasn’t absolutely certain. What he was certain of was that he would know the right way to get them out of this when he saw it.

  And then he did see it.

  Shepherd and Charlie emerged suddenly onto a wide boulevard. Just on the other side of the boulevard were the aqua waters of Dubai Creek. Dubai Creek isn’t really a creek at all, but rather a narrow inlet from the Persian Gulf that for centuries has been a port of call for small traders and a refuge for smugglers. The Creek was cluttered as it always was with its usual traffic of broad-beamed dhows while, between them, tiny abras darted like water bugs ferrying small groups of people from one side to the other.

  Shepherd didn’t hesitate. Dragging Charlie behind him, he broke into a lope across the road and headed straight for the Creek.

  There was a line of abras tied up at the bank right in front of them and Shepherd made straight for the nearest one. He jumped down into the boat, steadied himself for a moment as the little craft rocked from his weight, and helped Charlie to climb down behind him. The boatman was a dark-skinned fellow in blue shorts and a dirty white shirt. He was sitting in the stern of the boat methodically peeling and eating an orange. He regarded the new arrivals with curiosity.

  “Go!” Shepherd shouted at the boatman. He pushed Charlie down onto the hard wooden bench in the center of the little boat. “Go, for Christ’s sake!”

  The boatman didn’t move. He just sat there and stared at the crazy white guy screaming at him.

  Everyone in Dubai might not speak English, but Shepherd spoke another language he was sure would be understood. He pulled a wad of currency out of his pocket and waved it at the boatman. The man responded immediately. Dropping his orange, he shoved the boat off the wharf with one hand and fired the engine with the other. They sputtered into the Creek and the boatman turned downriver toward the wharf on the opposite bank where abras usually put in.

  Shepherd shook his head and pointed upriver. He could see the Sheraton Hotel in the distance and right now an American hotel looked pretty damn good to him. The boatman just stared at him, so Shepherd did the thing with the money again and pointed to the Sheraton. The man quickly swung the bow toward it.

  Shepherd sat down on the wooden bench next to Charlie. “Are you okay?” he called over the throbbing of the boat’s engine. “Were you hit?”

  When Charlie didn’t answer, Shepherd ran his hands over Charlie’s chest and neck looking for gunshot wounds. He was sure Charlie hadn’t taken a direct hit, but maybe a ricochet had caught him. The cut on his forehead wasn’t serious, Shepherd could see that now, just bleeding like a son of a bitch the way head cuts do.

  “Are you okay?” he shouted again.

  Charlie grunted, shook off Shepherd’s hands, and straightened up a little. He wiped a hand over his forehead and it came away covered with blood. Charlie held up his hand and looked at it for a moment.

  “Stop screaming,” he said. “I’m bleeding. I haven’t gone fucking deaf.”

  “I thought maybe you’d been—”

  “I’m fine except for this shit,” he said and wiggled his bloody hand뀀ybe.

  Charlie fished in his pocket with his other hand and came out with a white handkerchief. He used it to wipe some of the blood away and then he folded the handkerchief lengthwise and pressed it against the cut on his forehead to stop the bleeding. As the boat wallowed up Dubai Creek toward the Sheraton, Charlie shifted himself into a more comfortable position on the hard wooden seat.

  “Fuck,” he muttered, “I would have been better off letting those guys shoot me than getting rescued by you.”

  Shepherd didn’t know what to say to that, so he said nothing at all.

  A WORLD OF TROUBLE

  FOUR

  ALONE IN HIS hotel room later that afternoon, Shepherd watched CNN as they ran the story over and over. It was spectacular, of course, all the more so because the really dramatic parts were in slow motion. Shepherd saw everything he had seen only a few hours before all over again, but now he saw it from the point of view of the cameraman who had been at the other end of the courtyard. It was an odd feeling watching himself from the opposite direction. There was a sense of unreality to it, like he was part of a video game.

  The footage started with an innocuous view of the narrow passageway through which they had entered the courtyard. There was a slight motion at the bottom of the frame and the camera panned down. A brown and white cat, scrawny and mean looking, snarled at the camera and moved away at a deliberate pace.

  Exactly at the moment the cat disappeared from the frame there were several loud noises. Although the sounds weren’t recognizable on the film as gunshots, that’s what they were. The camera jerked slightly in reaction to the
first shot or two, then the image started to bounce as the cameraman ran toward the sound. He rounded the bend in the passageway and entered the courtyard, and his lens went straight to the Iranian-looking shooter with the .45.

  When the bullets are flying, it’s the gun that makes the impression, not the man behind it, but now that Shepherd was safely tucked up in his hotel room it was the man who held his attention. Each time the shooter’s face turned toward the camera, Shepherd leaned forward and studied it.

  The man looked younger than Shepherd recalled and the expression on his face was puzzling. Shepherd wasn’t sure what he expected. Rage, fanaticism, triumph perhaps. But it was none of those things. The man looked amused. That was the only word for it. Amused.

  The security man was on the left side of the courtyard charging directly at the gunman, firing as he ran, but the shooter never moved. The muzzle of his .45 stayed where it was, pointing directly into the camera lens. It was like a scene from a movie. The big, black handgun pointed straight at the camera; the muzzle opening looked as big as the Lincoln Tunnel; and the eyes of every viewer were drawn straight into it. The gunman held that pose, not firing. He looked more like a man posing for the camera than he did a killer.

  The driver was on the opposite side of the courtyard from the security man, running and firing across his body at the same time. He was spraying bullets everywhere. Shepherd saw at least three shots go high, catch the concrete façade of one of the shop houses, and ricochet away.