by Jake Needham
JACK SHEPHERD IS THE kind of lawyer people call a troubleshooter. At least that’s what they call him when they’re being polite. Shepherd is the guy people go to when they have a problem too ugly to tell anyone else about. He locates the trouble, and then he shoots it. Neat, huh? If life were only that simple…
A little money is missing from the Malaysian Development Fund, a sovereign wealth fund run by the Malaysian government. How little? Oh, a billion dollars or so, give or take. Shepherd is tiptoeing around Hong Kong’s financial back alleys looking for Malaysia’s missing money when an old friend from Bangkok dumps a much bigger problem in his lap.
A military coup has just swept over Thailand and the Thai army is holding Thailand’s first female prime minister under house arrest. Her popularity is a major threat to army rule and that’s why things are about to get messy. The army is going to hold a show trial, convict her of corruption, and send her to prison. Then, when she’s behind bars, they’re going to kill her. The only way to save her life is get her out of Thailand before the trial starts, and her friends need some big-time help to pull that off.
Shepherd once lived in Thailand. There was a time when he loved the place, then things went sour and he’s sworn he’ll never go back. But the former prime minister whose life is in danger is a woman with whom Shepherd once had a relationship – well, sort of – and Shepherd is loyal to his friends. He’s also a sucker for a smart, good-looking woman, but of course that has nothing at all to do with this. Whatever the real reason, Shepherd can feel it happening. Thailand is reeling him right back in no matter how hard he struggles to stay away.
Okay, he decides, how hard can it be? Sneak into Thailand, track down Malaysia’s missing money, grab his old friend right out from under the nose of the entire Thai army, and keep her hidden and alive long enough to get them both out of Thailand.
A piece of cake for the troubleshooter, huh?
What the Press Says About Jake Needham
“Jake Needham displays an insider’s knowledge of Thailand that may make some people here uncomfortable. Needham's tale of Thailand on the brink has a sense of old-fashioned elegance, and a society simultaneously brutal and graceful is wonderfully illuminated by it.” – The Bangkok Post
“Tight and atmospheric, Needham’s Jack Shepherd novels are thrillers of the highest caliber, a perfect combination of suspense and wit that will satisfy even the highest of standards. Jake Needham is a man who knows Asia like the back of his hand.” – The Malaysia Star
“Jake Needham is Asia’s most stylish and atmospheric writer of crime fiction.” – The Singapore Straits Times
“Needham knows where a few bodies are buried.” – Asia Inc.
“In his raw power to bring the street-level flavor of contemporary Asian cities to life, Jake Needham is Michael Connelly with steamed rice.” – The Bangkok Post
“What you will not get is pseudo-intellectual new-wave Asian literature, sappy relationship writing, or Bangkok bargirl sensationalism. This is top class fiction that happens to be set in an Asian context. As you turn the pages and follow Jack Shepherd in his quest for the truth, you can smell the roadside food stalls and hear the long tail boats roar up and down the Chao Praya River.” – Singapore Airline SilverKris Magazine
“Jake Needham has a knack for bringing intricate plots to life. His stories blur the line between fact and fiction and have a ‘ripped from the headlines’ feel...Buckle up and enjoy the ride.” – CNNgo
“Needham writes so you can smell the spicy street food mingling with the traffic jams, sweat and garbage.” – Libris Reviews
“For Mr. Needham, fiction is not just a good story, but an insight into a country’s soul.” – The New Paper
BOOKS BY JAKE NEEDHAM
THE INSPECTOR SAMUEL TAY SERIES
THE GIRL IN THE WINDOW
THE DEAD AMERICAN
THE UMBRELLA MAN
THE AMBASSADOR’S WIFE
THE JACK SHEPHERD SERIES
DON’T GET CAUGHT
THE KING OF MACAU
A WORLD OF TROUBLE
KILLING PLATO
LAUNDRY MAN
OTHER NOVELS
THE BIG MANGO
DON’T GET CAUGHT
A Jack Shepherd Novel
by
Jake Needham
Half Penny Ltd
Hong Kong
Table of Contents
BEGIN READING
BONUS PREVIEW: THE AMBASSADOR’S WIFE
THE JAKE NEEDHAM LIBRARY
MEET JAKE NEEDHAM
TABLE OF CONTENTS
COPYRIGHT
This is dedicated to the people of Thailand
who have seen the lights of freedom and self-determination
extinguished all across their poor, benighted little country.
I’m an innocent victim of a blinded alley
And I’m tired of all these soldiers here
No one speaks English, and everything’s broken
And my Stacys are soaking wet
To go waltzing Matilda, waltzing Matilda,
You’ll go waltzing Matilda with me
And it’s a battered old suitcase
To a hotel someplace
And a wound that will never heal
No prima donna, the perfume is on
An old shirt that is stained with blood and whiskey
And goodnight to the street sweepers
The night watchman flame keepers
And goodnight Matilda, too.
— Tom Waits
‘Tom Traubert’s Blues’
ONE
MONDAY AFTERNOON IN Hong Kong. The sky was the color of a dirty dishrag and I was on my way to Mongkok looking for a billion dollars.
The billion dollars wasn’t in Mongkok, of course. At least I didn’t think it was. What was in Mongkok was a guy who knew a guy who might know where I could start looking for it. Hong Kong works like that. There is always a guy who knows a guy. You just have to know who that guy is.
Mongkok is a Hong Kong neighborhood only three stops on the Mass Transit Railway north of the luxury hotels of Tsim Sha Tsui, but it might as well be on another planet for all it has in common with the Hong Kong most tourists see. The streets of Tsim Sha Tsui are lined with luxury boutiques, jewelry stores, and electronics shops. The sidewalks are overflowing with expensively suited men swinging leather briefcases and with elegantly attired women juggling Hermès, Chanel, and Armani shopping bags.
You won’t find many luxury boutiques in Mongkok. What you will find there are grimy storefronts selling the basics of urban life. You won’t see expensively suited men or elegantly attired women in Mongkok either. What you will see there is a massive crush of working-class Chinese. The throng of people jamming the streets of Mongkok is so great that it has all but driven away motorized traffic.
Mongkok is known to the world for three things. It is generally said to be the most crowded place on earth. It is the heart of the Hong Kong sex trade. And it is the stronghold of the Chinese triads.
About ten years ago, a massive complex called Langham Place opened in Mongkok. It had a couple of million square feet of shopping and offices, its own MTR station, and the ultra-modern Langham Place hotel. People predicted it would quickly gentrify the neighborhood, drive away the sex trade, and end the control of the triads.
Didn’t happen.
Probably won’t ever happen.
If you find yourself in Hong Kong some summer night when the darkness is heavy and liquid, head for Mongkok and you’ll see what I mean. Start at the tourist-thronged Ladies Market. Then, just around the corner, find the a
lleyway with so many stalls selling knock-off Nikes that the locals call it Sneaker Street. Follow it to the end, take a left on Shanghai Street, and walk south all the way to Dundas. The garbage probably hasn’t been collected and the air will be filled with the reek of rotting food, the stink of sewage, and the stench of the exhaust of a thousand vehicles. That’s the smell of Hong Kong. It’s something you will never forget.
Walk past the dim doorways of shops, their steel grates pulled down, and listen to the men coughing and women whispering in the shadows. Out there in the darkness there are more people than you can imagine. You won’t see them, but you’ll feel them breathing softly in the night. Old men with their undershirts rolled up to their nipples and cigarettes clinging to their bottom lips. Worn-out women bent from a lifetime of labor. Hard-looking young toughs in dirty shorts, shirtless in the heavy heat.
It’s safe enough, white boy. No one will bother you. You don’t matter here.
Pay attention to the doorways you pass, the ones brightly lit in pink or white that open onto staircases watched over by elderly men called ausuks, uncles. If you can read Chinese, stop and look at the menus posted just outside. They describe the nationalities of women that are the specialty of the house. But I wouldn’t hang around. Stand there too long and you’ll feel the triad punks easing up behind you.
Move along, gwailo. Nothing here for you.
You thought you had been to Hong Kong when you window-shopped at the designer boutiques in Tsim Sha Tsui, took the tram up to the Peak, and rode the Star Ferry, didn’t you?
Forget all that. That’s not Hong Kong.
This is Hong Kong.
MY NAME IS Jack Shepherd, and these days I call Hong Kong home. I do that mostly because I have to call somewhere home. Otherwise, I’d have to admit I really don’t know what home means anymore. Sometimes I think I ought to get myself a shopping cart and just be done with it.
That sounds like somebody introducing himself at group therapy, doesn’t it? Maybe that’s what this story really amounts to. A bit of group therapy.
If it is, you must be the group, and it’s my turn to talk, so just shut up and listen.
Not long ago I was a partner in one of Washington DC’s most powerful and politically connected law firms. Then, on not much more than a passing whim, I chucked all that power and the prestige to become a professor at the Sasin Institute of Business at Chulalongkorn University in Bangkok. But that was several years ago, and a lot has happened since then. These days I work by myself practicing law again, or something more or less like it, in a one-room office above a Hong Kong noodle shop. That’s not a career path most people would be proud of, but I try not to dwell on it.
When I was a lawyer in Washington, I had a reputation as a master at creating international structures and using them to manipulate large sums of money. A lot of people called me an expert on money laundering, which didn’t sound too good, so I usually tried to find another way to put it. But no matter how I described what I did, it still came down to the same thing. I knew how to hide money, and I knew how to find money when somebody else hid it.
It’s a follow-the-money age, of course, so my counsel on the subject was much in demand. I made friends in powerful positions. I was even on occasion invited to dine at the White House mess with the staff of the President of the United States. Heady stuff. But I had recently been divorced and was a bit personally adrift, and even heady stuff can start to feel stale and routine when your outlook on the world is busy going sour.
That was exactly when an old friend who had retired from his law practice and become Dean of the Sasin Institute at Chulalongkorn University called. He asked me to come to Bangkok, join his faculty, and teach international business to graduate students from all around Asia. It would be an adventure, he said. It sounded like exactly the tonic I needed just then, and I accepted.
I soon discovered I had a knack for teaching. My lectures were popular and it was fun to tell war stories about my battles in the world’s commercial jungles to an audience of students who had no choice but to pretend to enjoy them. Soon I became a respected member of the faculty at Chula and began to pick up a few consulting gigs on the side. I even found myself a beautiful Italian-born girlfriend, a woman who would later become my wife, and together Anita and I moved into one of Bangkok’s toniest apartment buildings.
That was when things really began to move for me. Half the companies in Asia seemed to want an American academic on their board of directors, particularly one with big-time connections in Washington. Private clients all over the world began lining up to seek my counsel on money-laundering safeguards.
There were piles of cash and there was personal prestige. There were private jets and there were suites at famous hotels. There was ego stroking on a massive scale. It was a great time. The best.
Today, on the other hand, is not a great time. Not the best.
I date the beginning of my fall to the day I became a reluctant player in a drama that at first seemed nothing but a harmless lark. An international fugitive who was only slightly less notorious than O.J. Simpson was living quite comfortably in Thailand under the protection of some bent politicians. But he was an American and he wanted to return to America, and he thought a White House pardon was exactly what he needed to sort everything out. He also thought I was his ticket to getting one.
The case became an international media sensation, and my involvement attracted worldwide attention. The elders of Chulalongkorn University were scandalized at my name being linked to such a notorious figure and they asked me to withdraw from the case. I didn’t see how I could. No matter who this man was, I had agreed to represent him, and walking away because he had become a personal inconvenience was something I couldn’t bring myself to do. So, with suitable doses of face saving all around, Chula and I parted company.
Finding myself suddenly cut loose from my job in a strange country was bad enough, but the gods had an even more savage blow in store for me.
Anita left me and went to Europe to live with her lover.
They say the husband is always the last to know, don’t they? I certainly was. And take it from me, there are few experiences more devastating to a man than discovering that the woman he loves, and the woman he thinks loves him, has someone she loves more.
I suppose I could have gone back to Washington when everything fell apart in Bangkok. Perhaps I should have gone back then. Although I doubt my old law firm would have wanted me, I could have found something to do.
So why didn’t I go back? Simple. I couldn’t face the humiliation.
I was Jack Shepherd, the man who charged off to sail the seas of international adventure. What was I supposed to do now? Admit that my boat had sunk and I was swimming back to shore? Fuck that.
A guy I knew in Hong Kong was taking a year off to sail a few seas of his own and he offered to let me live in his apartment while I got myself organized. I accepted without a second thought.
Thailand looked like it was done for me and Hong Kong seemed to have possibilities as a landing place. After all, it was one of the great illicit money centers on earth. I figured I could probably drum up enough business there to keep myself going for quite a while and build a great new life. As it turned out, I was absolutely right about the commercial opportunities I would find in Hong Kong. Not so much maybe about the great new life part.
These days I earn my living practicing law again, or at least that is what I say when someone asks me what I am doing in Hong Kong since I have no better answer. I’m not even sure I really am a lawyer anymore, at least not in the literal sense of the term. It’s been so long since I was last in touch with the District of Columbia Bar Association that they’ve probably kicked me out by now for not paying my dues.
It doesn’t matter. Nobody asks to see my bar card because I don’t do the things most lawyers do anymore. I don’t lobby government agencies, I don’t negotiate deals for corporations, and I certainly don’t show up in court.
I work quietly, I work discreetly, and I work alone. My clients like that because the problems they bring me are generally problems they don’t want anyone else to know they have. They are often problems that involve vast sums of not altogether street-legal money.
The planet hums with anonymous foreign companies and secret offshore trusts. The sums of money buried in all these companies and trusts and the bank accounts they have scattered around the world would give you vertigo. I know, because I buried some of it.
I understand how money moves. I understand where it goes to hide. I’m good at finding it again when it disappears. And I’m even better at doing that very, very quietly.
And so, naturally, that is where this story begins. With an enormous pile of money. A billion dollars, give or take, that’s in the wind.
Just in case you’re the impatient type, let me tell you right now how this story ends.
I made some choices. They took me to where I ended up. I had another destination in mind, but now I am where I am.
I’ll bet you understand exactly how that goes, don’t you?
I WILL TELL you as nearly as I can recall exactly what happened and how it happened, but that is all I can tell you. I cannot tell you why it happened.
On the other hand, finding out the why of things is what group therapy is for, isn’t it?
Are you comfortably seated?
Good. Then I will begin.
