That 737 coming into Dubai was the key. It was the key whether it was there to transport weapons, or Charlie, or both. Shepherd hadn’t the slightest doubt about that.
Okay, so what the hell was he going to do about it?
He had plenty of time to get to the airport before the plane turned up since the airport was only about a half hour’s drive from the Dusit Thani. But Dubai had an awfully big airport and he had no idea where the 737 would be parked. Then, even if he could find it, what was he going to do after that? Turn himself into Bruce Willis, round up some wisecracking cops, seize control of the airplane, and take it away from the CIA? Not freaking likely. He was going to have to come up with a hell of a lot better plan than that. Fortunately, he had an idea.
“I owe you, big guy,” he said to Jello.
“Goddamn it all, Jack, if you—”
Shepherd didn’t hear the rest of whatever Jello was trying to say. He had already cut him off and was dialing the number Keur had written on the back of his business card.
THIRTY-SIX
SINCE SHEPHERD AND Keur both knew where it was, they met thirty minutes later at the Fat Burger in the Dubai Mall. Shepherd ordered a chocolate shake, which he thought showed what a cool guy he was. Keur ordered plain black coffee, which Shepherd figured said more about Keur than he really wanted to know.
“Just out of curiosity,” Keur said, “did you actually intend to go anywhere when you asked me to drop you off at the airport this morning?”
Shepherd said nothing.
“You still don’t trust me, do you?” Keur asked.
“No.”
“I didn’t think so.”
A smiling Filipina girl of indeterminate age brought the shake and the coffee on a red plastic tray and they bagged the snappy repartee until she was gone.
“What is this all about, Jack? Why are we here?”
Shepherd took a slurp on his chocolate milkshake and belched slightly.
“You’re going to love this,” he said.
Keur just sat and waited.
“I know what’s happening,” he continued. “Well, some of it at least.”
Then Shepherd told Keur the truth, more or less. As a member of the bar in good standing, telling the truth was pretty much the last resort for him most of the time, and he certainly didn’t want to get into the habit. But right at that moment, it seemed the way to go.
“I need help,” he said. “And you’re all I’ve got.”
“Help doing what?”
“Stopping Harvey and then finding Charlie.”
“Who the fuck is Harvey?”
“An airplane.”
Keur looked at Shepherd carefully.
So Shepherd told him about the mirrored building at Don Mueang Airport in Bangkok. He told him about the 737 with the UAE tail number. And he told him about the weapons shipments into the rebel-held areas in the south of Thailand.
Keur was absolutely expressionless.
So Shepherd told him why the airplane was called Harvey. He figured at least that would get a rise out of Keur. He was right.
“You named this airplane after an invisible white rabbit?” Keur asked.
Shepherd shrugged. “Not me.”
“Then who?”
He shrugged again, but he didn’t say anything.
Keur sipped at his coffee. Put the cup down, picked it up, and sipped some more.
“Where are you getting all this stuff?” he finally asked.
“I can’t tell you that.”
“Then I can’t help you.”
Shepherd didn’t want to say anything about Kate, of course, but it was starting to look like he had no choice. He needed Keur’s help and he wasn’t going to get it without telling him where his information was coming from. He could hardly blame Keur for that. If their situations had been reversed, he would have insisted on knowing, too.
So Shepherd told Keur about Kate. All in all, he pretty much dropped his trousers for Keur.
“So this is really about a woman, is it?”
“Oh, crap,” Shepherd snapped. “Will you listen to me, Keur? What I’m trying to tell you is—”
“So after all the moralizing bullshit you gave me before,” he interrupted, “you’re willing to fuck over General Kitnarok after all. And this is all because now he’s squaring off against a woman you want to bang.”
“Maybe this is all just too hard for you to understand.”
“Then make me understand.”
“Charlie Kitnarok is my friend as well as my client. I’m not going to betray him to anyone.”
“But you just told me—”
“Kate is also my friend. I care about her. I don’t want to see anything happen to her either.”
“You can’t bat for both sides, Jack. Make up your fucking mind.”
“I can. I am on both sides. I’m going to find a way to shut off the weapons shipments. No guns, no civil war. Then Kate and Charlie can battle out the politics in some way that doesn’t kill anybody, least of all either one of them.”
“Oh hell, I fucking knew it.” Keur pushed back his chair and threw his arms in the air. “You’re going to bring peace to the country and earn the everlasting gratitude of the little brown people. Shit, I really don’t need all that do-gooder crap right now.”
“That’s the difference between you and me, Keur.”
“What? You’re a starry-eyed sap and I’m a realist?”
Shepherd looked away. This wasn’t going exactly the way he had hoped it would. He was getting nothing but attitude from Keur. Shepherd took a deep breath and went on anyway.
“Harvey’s here,” he said. “I want to stop it from taking off, or at least stall it for a while.”
For a second Keur looked confused. “You’re talking about this plane you named after a rabbit?”
“Kate named it.”
“Whatever. But you’re saying the plane is here in Dubai?”
“More or less. It should be landing in about an hour and a half. If I’m right, they’ll take on a load of arms and fly right back to Thailand.”
“Maybe they’re picking up General Kitnarok. You ever think of that?”
“Yeah, I thought of that. But I doubt it. Going back to Thailand in a cargo aircraft isn’t Charlie’s style. He’d want to make a triumphal entry, not sneak in.”
Keur looked at Shepherd and looked away. Then he looked back again.
“Just spell it out, Jack. What are you telling me?”
“You want my help nailing Darling. I’m telling you I’ll give it to you. I don’t give a shit about Darling. You help me stop that plane and I’ll help you nail Darling.”
“How are you going to do that?”
Shepherd kept quiet. He figured he had said about all he could. If Keur wouldn’t go for it, he wouldn’t, but anything else he might say now wasn’t going to help.
“Look,” Keur said after a moment, “even if I were far enough out of my mind to be willing to get involved with this, you don’t seriously think I can just—”
“I don’t know what you can do. Charlie’s apparently got the CIA on his side. All I have is you. So I’m hoping for the best.”
There was a pause. Keur looked away and tapped his fingers against his empty coffee cup. After a minute or two he shifted his weight and leaned forward on his forearms.
“I know somebody at the airport here,” he said. “Maybe—”
“There you go!” Shepherd shouted. He jumped up from the table and slapped Keur on the shoulder.
The man at the next table slowly turned his head to see what the commotion was all about. He was a large, heavy man with a pointed beard who was dressed in flowing white robes and a white headdress. Shepherd caught his eyes and wished he hadn’t. They were dead and unblinking, so black that they seemed bottomless. The man stared hard at Shepherd. He looked as if he was memorizing his appearance, just in case.
“For God’s sake,” Keur said. “Sit down and lower your voice. If
this all goes tits up, I don’t want some fucking Arab putting us together.”
Shepherd didn’t give a damn what anybody put together as long as he could stop that plane. At least stop it until he could find Charlie and convince him to abandon the plan he was apparently hatching to force his way back into power in Thailand.
If he couldn’t do that, people were going to die. Maybe a lot of people. Maybe even Charlie and Kate, too.
THIRTY-SEVEN
WHEN KEUR SAID he knew somebody at the airport, Shepherd pictured a brawny Arab baggage handler wearing baggy shorts, a wrinkled T-shirt, and floppy socks. What he did not picture was a tall, blue-eyed German woman with long blond hair, a white suite that looked like Armani, and white pumps that looked like Jimmy Choos. And he really didn’t picture someone with a front porch on which you could park a helicopter.
“Jack Shepherd, meet Rachel Rein,” Keur said. “Rachel is Emirates Airlines Group Vice-President of Security.”
“Why have you never told me you have such a good-looking friend, Lenny?”
Lenny? Shepherd shot Keur a quick look. He remembered Keur introducing himself as Special Agent Leonard Keur, of course, but somehow ever since he had stopped thinking of Keur as the sort of person who had a first name. And he absolutely didn’t seem the sort of person who had a first name like Lenny.
“Are you with the FBI, too, Mr. Shepherd?” Rachel asked.
“Nope,” Keur cut in before Shepherd could answer her. “Jack’s a bag man for a corrupt Thai politician.”
“Ah Jesus,” Shepherd muttered.
“A bag man?” Rachel smiled. “How fascinating. I have never met a bag man before.”
Shepherd wanted to say something in his own defense, but he wasn’t quite certain what it would be. Sadly enough, Keur’s characterization of his occupation wasn’t completely inaccurate. He settled for doing his best to look indignant and said nothing.
“Look, Rachel,” Keur said, completely ignoring Shepherd’s display of umbrage, “I’m sorry to drop in on you unannounced like this, but—”
Rachel cut Keur off with a hug and a kiss on the cheek. “Nonsense, Lenny. You know I am always happy to see you. Sit down.”
Shepherd had expected to be in a smelly freight shed in some forgotten corner of the airport talking to a baggage handler who smelled more or less like the shed. Instead, here he was in a snazzy office at the headquarters building of Emirates Airways ogling Miss Deutschland of about 1995. He settled back on the butter-soft leather of one of Rachel’s very expensive sofas and awaited developments.
“Coffee?” she asked.
Keur and Shepherd both accepted. Rachel called somebody to serve it and while she was on the telephone Shepherd looked around her office. One entire side was floor-to-ceiling glass with a panoramic view of Terminal 1, the building occupied entirely by Emirates Airways. He had always thought the Emirates terminal was an odd-looking structure, long and thin and half round on the top, like a bead of toothpaste that had been squeezed across the field from a giant tube of Crest. Rachel’s office looked a lot better: cream-colored leather sofas, thick carpet the exact shade of a correctly made cappuccino, and two giant Sony flat panels mounted on the wall opposite her desk. One was showing CNN and the other was showing BBC News, both with their sound muted.
Keur sat down next to Shepherd. Rachel hung up the telephone and smiled at him.
“So what can I do for you, Lenny?”
“I’m calling in that favor you owe me. I need some information, but I can’t tell you why I need it.”
“Ah,” she said, “a mystery. I love a mystery. Are you some kind of a spy, Lenny? You say you are FBI, but I have never really believed you. I have always wondered if you are really a spy.”
Keur looked away and cleared his throat.
“What do you think, Mr. Shepherd?” Rachel asked, turning those big blue eyes on him. “Is our friend Lenny here really with the FBI? Or do you think he is some kind of a spy?”
“I certainly hope not.”
“Rachel sees spies everywhere,” Keur cut in. “She was a deputy director of the BKA before she joined Emirates.”
Shepherd had no idea what Keur was talking about and it apparently showed.
“The Bundeskriminalamt,” Keur explained. “The German Federal Criminal Police.”
“The BKA is like the FBI, Mr. Shepherd,” Rachel said. “Only much, much smarter.”
There was a knock on the door and a chubby, middle-aged woman entered carrying a wooden tray with three cups of coffee. They fell silent until she had served. Then she left again, closing the door behind her.
“Could we get back to the point now?” Keur said after she did.
“Oh, you had a point, Lenny?” Rachel winked at Shepherd. “And what might that have been?”
“There is an aircraft we are interested in that we think will be landing here very soon. Probably at about…”
Keur stopped talking and looked at Shepherd.
“At about two-thirty,” Shepherd said, picking up the story from there. “It’s a 737. An all-freight configuration. And it will be coming from Thailand, I think.”
“Bangkok?” Rachel asked, sipping at her coffee.
“I don’t know for sure. The flight originated in Bangkok, but they filed for Phuket first. Then from there to Dubai. But the plane never landed in Phuket. My guess is it landed somewhere else, probably at a private strip not far from Phuket. Wherever it went, I think it will be coming to Dubai from there.”
Rachel didn’t ask any of the obvious questions. Shepherd assumed that was because she had some kind of a relationship with Keur that made her think she could trust him. He hoped she was right about that.
She just pulled a pad toward her and picked up a pen. “Do you have a tail number?”
“A6-NSU,” Shepherd said.
“A UAE registration.”
It wasn’t a question, so Shepherd said nothing.
She wrote down Harvey’s registration number and then glanced back up and held Shepherd’s eyes for a moment.
“Whose aircraft is this?” she asked.
“It’s being operated on charter by Trippler Aviation.”
Rachel tapped the point of her pen against her pad a couple of times, then put the pen down. “Do you know anything about Trippler Aviation?”
“A little,” Shepherd said. “Enough probably.”
Rachel looked at Keur. “Do you know who actually owns this aircraft, Lenny?”
Keur pointed at Shepherd.
“Well then, Mr. Shepherd,” Rachel said, shifting her eyes to his. “Can you tell me who owns this aircraft you’re so interested in?”
“No,” Shepherd said, “I can’t.”
“Can’t?” Rachel asked, “Or won’t.”
“Let’s just say it would be better if I didn’t. Better for you.”
Rachel nodded and looked down at her desk. She picked up the pen again and went back to tapping the point against her pad.
“We think the aircraft is coming into Dubai to pick up cargo,” Keur said after a minute or two had passed in silence. “All we need is to find a way to delay its departure until we’re certain what’s on it. And where it’s going.”
“That’s all?” Rachel laughed.
Neither Keur nor Shepherd said anything.
“Is this official, Lenny?”
“Depends what you mean by official.”
Rachel looked from one to the other and thought about that.
“Is this aircraft bringing cargo into Dubai?” she asked after a moment. “Or just carrying cargo out?”
“We don’t know for sure.”
“Are we dealing with drugs here?”
“No,” Keur said. “Arms and ammunition.”
Rachel’s face showed no reaction.
“Do you know who’s servicing the aircraft in Dubai?”
“No.”
“Do you know where on the airport it will be parking?”
“No ide
a.”
“For two reasonably intelligent men, you don’t know very much, do you?”
Keur and Shepherd both shifted their eyes away to the windows and said nothing.
Rachel pursued her lips and made little popping sounds. Abruptly she dropped her pen, looked straight at Shepherd, and pointed at him with her index finger.
“What’s he got to do with all this, Lenny? Who is he really?”
“I’m his lawyer,” Shepherd answered before Keur could say anything.
Rachel actually chuckled at that.
“It’s true,” Shepherd said. “I really am.”
“Lieber Gott,” Rachel said, shaking her head. “Another spy.”
THIRTY-EIGHT
SHEPHERD AND KEUR sat without speaking while Rachel tapped at the keyboard on her desk. The flat panel monitor was big and white and it faced away from them so they couldn’t see what she was looking at, which left them nothing to do really but to watch Rachel while she watched the screen. Either that or look out the windows at the airport. Shepherd chose to watch Rachel. He hoped Keur was smart enough to make the same choice.
“According to the flight plan, A6-NSU left Phuket at 1136 local time today,” Rachel said after a minute or two, reading from her screen. “It is estimated Dubai at 1423.”
“I have information the plane was never in Phuket,” Shepherd said. “And I trust the source of my information.”
Rachel looked up and shrugged. “The pilot didn’t file until twenty minutes after take off. He might have taken off from another airport near Phuket instead, I suppose. That is possible.”
She studied her screen for another moment or two, and then said, “Here’s something that’s a little odd.”
“What?” Keur asked.
“A6-NSU is scheduled to park at remote bay 211A.”
“Why is that odd?”
“Well…” Rachel studied the screen a little longer. Her tongue poked at the inside of her cheek, flicking rhythmically up and down.
“It’s not a normal parking bay for a cargo aircraft. It’s around the side of the cargo terminal. There’s not much there but a government hanger.”
World of Trouble (9786167611136) Page 21
