by Jake Needham
“Mrs. Shepherd, I’m Plato Karsarkis.”
“Of course you are.”
Anita shook Karsarkis’ hand as well, although I noticed that with her he restricted himself to a one-hander.
Another uniformed maid appeared beside us so silently I wondered if she had grown out of the marble like the two fig trees. She carried a silver tray with a half-dozen champagne flutes and Karsarkis distributed glasses to both of us. Then he took one for himself.
“This is quite a house,” I said to Karsarkis, mostly just to be saying something.
Naturally the real question on my mind was how a notorious international fugitive had gone about acquiring such an extravagant house in a world-famous resort like Phuket, and more to the point, how he had done it without anyone apparently noticing. Karsarkis obviously realized what I was thinking because he benevolently offered an explanation without forcing me to make my curiosity explicit.
“One of our local companies built this place about five years ago. It was supposed to be for entertaining or to loan to clients. I never stayed here myself until now, but…” Karsarkis trailed off with a shrug that looked genuinely rueful. “I’m sure you understand.”
I smiled tightly without saying anything. I also drank some of the champagne, which I wasn’t surprised to discover was pretty good stuff.
Karsarkis watched me, his face a mask.
“Maybe I’m wrong, Jack, but my guess is you’re not too happy to be here tonight. Am I right about that?”
I responded quickly, too quickly for my better judgment to have any chance to grab my elbow and warn me to keep my big mouth shut.
“The only reason we’re here tonight is because Anita wanted to come,” I said, “and I didn’t think it was worth arguing about. I don’t know how much of what they say about you is true and how much is made up, but I think enough of it probably is true to make me certain I wouldn’t be in your house tonight if Anita hadn’t insisted. I’m sorry if you think I’m rude, but you did ask.”
Karsarkis lowered his head and something resembling a repentant smile slid over his face.
“You are married to a very straightforward man, Mrs. Shepherd.”
“That’s one of the things I’ve heard Jack called,” Anita said. I noticed she didn’t look at me when she spoke. “But most of the other things are considerably more colorful.”
Karsarkis laughed, but somewhat automatically, I thought. Then he lifted his eyes to mine again. “What is it you don’t like about me, Professor?”
“I don’t know you,” I said. “It’s what I’ve heard about you that I don’t like.”
The abrupt change in the way Karsarkis had addressed me caught my attention. At least calling me professor was less pally than calling me Jack, and less pally was just fine with me. Maybe our relationship was moving in the right direction after all.
“Jack,” Anita murmured, obviously more than a little uncomfortable, “I don’t think—”
“No, let me finish. I’m sure Mr. Karsarkis would prefer it if I spoke my mind.”
Karsarkis tilted his head slightly and gave a little wave with his champagne glass, a gesture I took to be an invitation for me to continue. So I did.
“Coming here has put me in an impossible position. What am I supposed to do now? You’re a fugitive, Mr. Karsarkis. You jumped bail and fled the US.”
“Are you done, Jack?” Anita’s voice was crisp now.
“No, Anita, thank you for asking, I’m not done. I am a lawyer, as you may recall, a member in good standing of the Bar of the Supreme Court of the United States, and although I admit my personal connection with the concept of justice may sometimes be a touch tenuous, I still have at least a degree of concern for the ideal. So what do I do now? Have dinner at this man’s home and then turn him in? And what if I do nothing? Am I helping to harbor a fugitive? Shouldn’t I just call Bangkok right now and tell the American Embassy where they can find this guy?”
“They know where they can find me,” Karsarkis said. He spoke so softly I wasn’t absolutely sure I had heard him right.
“Pardon me?”
“I said the American Embassy knows where they can find me,” Karsarkis repeated. “A lot of people have known about this house since the day it was built, and anybody who has the slightest interest in me knows I’m here now.”
“Then why don’t they send somebody down here and arrest you?”
“This is Thailand, Professor. The United States government has no jurisdiction to arrest anyone here.”
That was true, of course, but Thai authorities could certainly arrest Karsarkis if the American Embassy requested it. I wasn’t an expert on such things, but I was pretty certain there was an extradition treaty in effect between the United States and Thailand. I knew I’d heard of people being extradited in drug cases to face American courts, at least a few, and if the embassy requested Karsarkis’ arrest and extradition, I couldn’t imagine why he wouldn’t get the same treatment.
Again, Karsarkis seemed to sense the question that was in my mind before I asked it.
“The Thais’ view of my presence here is rather different from the American view,” he said. “Nothing I have been charged with is a crime under Thai law, my lawyers tell me, so happily I am not subject to the terms of the extradition treaty. The Thais are pleased to have me in their country.”
I’ll bet, I thought to myself. And I wonder exactly how much that is costing him.
“Please excuse my husband, Mr. Karsarkis.” Anita tossed a hard look in my direction. “He’s a terrible bore sometimes.”
“Please, Anita. It’s Plato.”
Anita fidgeted. She shot me another hard look and I thought I saw unease in her eyes.
“Fine. Plato then.”
“I don’t mind the professor here saying whatever he wants to, Anita. He’s a smart guy. Smart guys think a lot.”
Karsarkis shifted his eyes back to mine and reached out and tapped me on the forearm with one finger.
“But don’t believe everything you’ve heard about me, Professor. You just keep asking questions and listening to the answers and maybe you’ll learn some things that will surprise you.”
After that Karsarkis led us around and introduced us to the rest of his guests as if we’d just had a brief conversation no more awkward than a chat about the weather. The man had self-confidence out the butt, I’d give him that.
The distinguished Thai in the dark suit turned out to be a former prime minister, a man named Sakda who had resigned suddenly a few years back under somewhat cloudy circumstances. He was now married to a blonde Australian at least six inches taller than he was, a woman who looked to me like she must have played the trombone in her high school band. I wondered if she was part of the punishment meted out to Sakda for whatever he was supposed to have done. Regardless, I figured him for the dark Mercedes.
Next there was a short, middle-aged Englishman with bad teeth and a bad complexion who was accompanied by an attractive Thai woman with good everything. She didn’t appear to like him all that much, it seemed to me, but perhaps that was just my imagination. I made the Englishman for the four-wheel drive.
And then there was a bland, pear-shaped man who I thought looked generically European. He was wearing a rumpled suit without a tie and had a Russian-sounding nickname. Karsarkis called him Yuri, which seemed about right when I looked at him closely, but he also had an American accent, which didn’t. Like the Englishman he was accompanied by an Asian woman, although after a brief inspection I decided Yuri’s companion was probably Chinese rather than Thai. That left them as the white Suzuki.
“And this is my wife,” Karsarkis finally said, leading us over to a tall woman with long, dark hair. She had her back to us and was talking animatedly with Mike O’Connell, the man Karsarkis had sent into the Boathouse the night before to invite us to dinner.
“Baby,” he said putting his hand on her shoulder. “I’d like you to meet Jack and Anita Shepherd.”
&nb
sp; The woman turned with a smile that startled me with its unexpected warmth. While she may not have been a blonde, other than that I had nailed her cold. I tried to catch Anita’s eye, but she wouldn’t look at me.
“I’m Mia,” Karsarkis’ wife said, shaking hands with Anita first, and then me. “We’re so glad you could come. It’s nice to see some other Americans for a change.”
“Actually, I’m not American.” Anita said.
“You’re not?” Mia looked a little puzzled.
“No, I’m Italian.”
“You don’t look Italian,” Karsarkis observed, although I wasn’t absolutely sure what he meant by that. Maybe he thought if Anita was really Italian that she ought to be wearing a long black dress with a white apron over it, black stockings, and a pair of little black shoes.
“My mother was Italian,” Anita said. “My father was English, but mi considero Italiano.”
“Most people who marry Americans seem to want to become American citizens,” Mia said.
She was replying to Anita, but I noticed she was looking at me when she spoke, almost as if it was somehow my fault Anita was still Italian.
“Not me,” Anita said cheerfully. “Sono fiero di essere Italiano!”
“È bello essere fiere di ciô che si è,” Karsarkis responded.
Anita inclined her head appreciatively at his apparent fluency in the language.
“È meglio di essere Francese,” she said.
“Could we get back to a language I speak?” I asked.
“Why?” Anita asked. “Is there someone here you haven’t insulted yet?”
Karsarkis laughed loudly, but Mia sensed something unpleasant might be happening and quickly changed the subject.
Turning toward me and conjuring up a pleasantly inconsequential tone of voice, she asked, “Are all those things I’ve been hearing about you true, Mr. Shepherd?”
“I wouldn’t doubt it a bit,” I replied, looking straight at Anita.
I knew it was an ungracious response to a woman who was only trying to keep the conversation light, but I was still smarting from Anita’s dig and Karsarkis’ appreciative response to it so to hell with them all.
Showing the reflexes of a battle-hardened hostess, Mia realized she needed to do something to defuse whatever that burning smell in the air might be.
“Now that everyone is here,” she asked the room at large, “shall we go in to dinner?” She phrased it as a question, but her tone said it wasn’t a question at all.
Then, just to make sure than no one had missed her point, Mia started walking toward the dining room without bothering to wait for anyone to answer her.
SEVEN
THE DINING ROOM was high ceilinged and windowless except for the wall that faced the courtyard, which was all glass. A thick clump of banana trees and several pieces of modern sculpture were set in a rock garden just outside the glass and the deep blue light from the swimming pool was a glowing presence in the room. At the center was a long, narrow table with a black marble top. It was covered in candles and set for ten.
Mia took a seat at one end of the table and directed the former prime minister to sit on one side of her and me on the other. Karsarkis sat at the opposite end between Anita and the prime minister’s Australian wife.
Everyone stuck largely to murmuring about the weather and such while a small army of servants came and went, pouring wine and serving food. The first course was a local dish I didn’t recognize, but no one else asked what it was and I didn’t want to make an ass of myself so I didn’t ask either. The second course put me onto safer ground. I knew it was a mango salad of some kind, and it was pretty good.
The Englishman prattled on and on while the rest of us ate, but I hardly registered anything he said, tuning him out in favor of studying the other guests more closely.
Yuri didn’t appear to have much to say for himself, which disappointed me since I was hugely curious about him and was hoping he would drop a hint or two as to who he really was and what his connection with Karsarkis might be. Neither Yuri’s companion nor the Englishman’s companion said anything at all. I thought the Chinese-looking girl with Yuri seemed genuinely puzzled as to who all these people were and what they were talking about. She appeared so uncomfortably out of place I felt a little sorry for her.
The Thai woman who was with the Englishman, however, was quite another matter. A tortoiseshell band pinned back her long black hair, there was just a touch of a suntan on her face, and whatever make-up she wore was imperceptible. If the woman had been English, I would have described her as horsy, but as she was manifestly Thai the term just didn’t seem to sit right on her. Still, it was hard to come up with a better one. She had a high forehead and a bit of rosy flush that looked healthy and seemed to speak of outdoor living and riding mannishly. The only things about her that didn’t fit were the obviously very fine and very expensive diamond ear clips she wore.
The conversation drifted around to the usual cannon fodder of such dinner parties: money and sex. Money in the form of speculation over the reasons for the recent wild swings in the world’s stock markets; sex in the form of conjecture as to the orientation of the newly appointed American Secretary of State. The man had an extremely attractive wife, at least for an American Secretary of State he did, and I had never heard before that there was any doubt at all as to his sexual persuasion. From the conversation around me, however, I judged there were a goodly number of such things I had never heard before.
Then, out of nowhere, the Englishman leaned down the table and put a question to Karsarkis in a loud voice, one that stopped all the idle conversation cold.
“Plato, does all this talk about American politics make you miss the United States?”
I cut my eyes at Mia while waiting to hear what Karsarkis had to say to that and I was pretty sure I saw her wince slightly.
Karsarkis seemed to think for a moment, although I figured that was mostly stagecraft on his part, and then he exhaled slowly. “I love Thailand and I may well live here for the rest of my life. Nevertheless I would like to visit America from time to time…so yes, I guess that must mean I do miss it, in a way.”
“You’re up to something, Plato,” the Englishman blundered on, apparently heedless of the consternation he had caused at the table. “I know it. I can feel it.”
“I’m not sure what will happen from here,” Karsarkis responded very slowly. “I’d like to work things out, but I don’t really feel very sure of anything anymore.”
Suddenly Yuri spoke up, back from the dead.
“There must be something that can be done, Plato,” he said. “I have many friends. All you must do is say the word.”
I wasn’t sure what that was supposed to mean, but I didn’t much like the sound of it.
“Well…” Karsarkis seemed to think, but again the gesture struck me as affected, although to impress whom I had no idea. “There are one or two people standing in my way.”
Everyone laughed merrily at that while a few obvious solutions to the problem danced through my mind, such as Karsarkis having all those people’s throats slashed exactly like Cynthia Kim’s had been. Not to appear disagreeable, I kept my thoughts on the subject to myself and mimed a chuckle or two of my own.
The former prime minister, who had been almost completely silent throughout the entire meal thus far, rumbled to life. His voice was smooth and cultured, and the sound of it suggested the man’s formative years had probably been spent at an expensive English boarding school, certainly not in Thailand.
“The Kingdom of Thailand is proud to have Plato here,” he said. “And we hope he will stay with us for many years to come.”
“Thank you, Prime Minister.” Karsarkis bobbed his head in acknowledgment of the man’s endorsement and tried—without any success, I thought—to look modest and self-effacing at the same time. “You are too kind.”
“Not at all, Plato. Not at all. You are one of the giants. It is our honor to have you in our country
.”
Sakda looked as if he had more to say—and Karsarkis looked as if he hoped he didn’t—but the old man started talking again before Karsarkis could head him off.
“You are a true friend of the Thai people, Plato, and the Thai people are your friends. Your work on our behalf has guaranteed a supply of competitively-priced petroleum far into the future and given us a secure basis for rapid industrial expansion.”
With that, the old man went back to his lobster.
Ah ha, I thought. So that’s it.
Translation: Plato Karsarkis was selling Thailand some of the embargoed Iraqi oil he was accused of smuggling, naturally at cut-rate prices.
Most Asian countries lacked any domestic sources of oil at all and were almost wholly dependent on a steady stream coming in from the Middle East to keep their cars going and their electrical generators turning. High oil prices and tight supply meant economic stagnation, or a good deal worse. Low oil prices and loose supply meant prosperity, particularly for the people who controlled the oil and took a cut as it flowed by.
And that was no doubt the second part of the equation here.
Karsarkis’ supplies of Iraqi oil were obviously being delivered through Sakda and his cronies, which explained where Karsarkis’ protection was coming from. That was a vastly more effective arrangement for Karsarkis than straight bribery. When you bought a politician, your problem was the same in any country—to make sure he stayed bought. If the buying was done through a continuing drip feed of Iraqi oil at below-market prices, then you had the problem pretty well licked. Shrewd of Karsarkis, I had to admit to myself. Very shrewd indeed.
The former prime minister’s sudden wakefulness seemed to energize his Australian wife as well. All of a sudden the woman pitched forward in her seat banging the base of her wine glass against her plate. The noise caused me to glance over at her and I noticed for the first time she had a bracelet tattooed around her right wrist. It was purple and appeared to be a likeness of intertwined grape leaves and barbed wire. What would ever possess a woman to do that, I wondered as I looked at her? Why would any woman get up one morning and say to herself, I think today I will have a bracelet of grape leaves and barbed wire tattooed in purple around my right wrist because no doubt it will make me look indescribably beautiful and eerily desirable. I had to admit that there were some things about life that just eluded me entirely.
