[Jack Shepherd 02.0] Killing Plato

by Jake Needham

  Darcy was very careful about her own security, probably because she had so little difficulty shredding everyone else’s. The only way to reach her was by calling and hanging up. The call went to a computer somewhere and I didn’t have a clue what happened then although I figured it was something really cool. But Darcy always called me back right away so I didn’t really care.

  After hearing the one ring and hanging up, I surveyed my desk and briefly examined the pile of mail Bun had left stacked on top of The Wall Street Journal. If I hadn’t had to move it off the newspaper, I probably wouldn’t have bothered. No one in Thailand was foolish enough to use the postal service for anything that actually matters. Tossing the mail in the garbage, I swung my feet up on my desk and unfolded the Journal. I hadn’t even made it past page one before my direct line rang.

  “Jack, baby,” Darcy purred when I answered. “You called?”

  “You have my mobile number, don’t you?”

  Darcy cut the connection without another word and a few seconds later my mobile beeped.

  “Okay, baby,” Darcy said when I answered, “so what kind of shit are you in this time?”

  “The usual, I guess. The brown kind.”

  “You figure your phone is monitored?”

  “Maybe. I don’t know.”

  “Just because you’re talking on a GSM cell now, you’re not invulnerable.”

  “I thought it was pretty solid,” I said.

  “Depends on who you’re up against.”

  “Everything always does, Darcy.”

  “Uh-huh,” she said. “So, baby, enough of the happy talk, huh? Let’s have it.”

  I told her about the disk Kathleeya had given me and about the security measures she claimed it contained. Darcy didn’t ask for any details of why I was riding around town chatting with the head of the National Intelligence Agency, nor did she ask me what was on the disk. Her standards of professional discretion ruled out both questions.

  “So what do you think?” I asked. “About the disk.”

  “Everybody underestimates the Thais when it comes to technology,” Darcy said. “Besides, stuff like that is pretty common now. You can buy off-the-shelf software that will prevent copying, printing, and emailing of any file just by pasting a transparent image over it. The part about the disk corrupting itself after a set period would be a little harder to do, but it’s probably a variation on the built-in detonation a lot of corporate users are putting into their email now.”

  “You lost me.”

  “It doesn’t really matter. If Kate told you your disk was rigged to corrupt itself, my guess is it’s true.”

  “You call her Kate?” I asked. “So you know here pretty well?”

  Darcy ignored my question.

  “Just in general,” she asked me instead, “do you have any idea what type of files are on the disk?”

  “Some text files, I think, or maybe PDFs. Nothing fancy that I know of. I asked the NIA for some stuff and they decided to give it to me, at least with all this security attached.”

  “And you want to know if I can beat their security measures.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “Something like that.”

  “Why do you care, Jack? Why not just read whatever is on the disk and let it go at that? Why do you need to copy it?”

  “If there’s something that I end up relying on, Darcy, I don’t want them to claim later that it never existed.”

  “You think they’d do that?”

  “Sure. Particularly if they have some purpose I don’t see right now for giving me this stuff in the first place.”

  Darcy made some little clucking noises with her tongue. “I imagine I can get past whatever they’ve put on your disk without too much trouble.”

  “I thought you said they were good.”

  “They are, baby,” she murmured. “But I’m better.”

  I summoned up the required chuckle right on cue.

  “You want me to bring the disk out to you?” I asked.

  “Why don’t I send one of the boys over to pick it up now?” Darcy said. “Then come out for dinner tonight and I’ll tell you what we’ve got. How about that? Nata would love to see you, baby.”

  Darcy didn’t have to dangle Nata as an incentive to me to come out to her place for dinner, although I guess it didn’t hurt. Nata was a stunningly beautiful Thai woman in her forties whose ex-husband had been a powerful and well-connected general until he ended up on the wrong side of some long-forgotten military coup. These days the former general was living in Copenhagen, and Nata was living in Bangkok, with Darcy. The two had been companions longer than I had known Darcy and I’d always assumed Nata had as much to do with Darcy’s choice of Bangkok for her retirement as did the relatively cheap real estate and nice people. Darcy would hardly be the first person I’d met who had upped stakes and moved to Bangkok for a woman.

  “Don’t know why not,” I said. “Let me call Anita and see if she’s planned anything yet.”

  There was an unmistakable beat of silence.

  “Sure,” Darcy said, “bring her along if you like.”

  I knew Darcy had never particularly cared for Anita. I wasn’t certain why that was and I had often wondered about it. I got a vague feeling Darcy was suspicious of Anita in some way, as if her radar had picked up something about Anita she didn’t like but didn’t think it appropriate to mention to me. Maybe it was more than that, or maybe it was less, but I hadn’t flat out asked Darcy about it and probably never would.

  “Nah, probably not a good idea,” I said. “Anita would just get pissed off watching me flirt with you.”

  Darcy gave a throaty chuckle and didn’t even offer the pretense of an argument.

  “Okay, baby. I’ll have somebody in your office for the disk within a half hour. Why don’t you get here about seven. That okay with you?”

  “Done deal,” I said.

  After Darcy had hung up, I punched the speed dial for Chidlom Place, but Anita wasn’t home and the maid didn’t know where she was. I tried the speed dial for Anita’s cell phone, too, and ended up listening to her voice mail the way I had been doing a lot lately. I hung up without leaving a message.

  I was a little annoyed I couldn’t reach Anita and then I was immediately annoyed with myself for being annoyed. I swore not to think about it anymore, picked up the Journal again, and kicked back to finish it while I waited for Darcy’s messenger.

  I was never exactly sure how Darcy put people almost anywhere in Bangkok in such a short time since the local traffic was so awful it had attained legendary status. I had visions of dozens of nondescript-looking boys on motorcycles orbiting slowly in various parts of the city just waiting for Darcy to ask them to do something. Actually, maybe that was how it worked.

  Less than fifteen minutes later there was a soft tapping on my office door. A polite young man in his early twenties wearing a dark and completely forgettable gray shirt and equally gray pants entered and waied deeply. I gave him the floppy disk in a padded envelope and he slipped it into a leather dispatch bag slung over his shoulder, waied again, and disappeared without having spoken a word.

  TWENTY NINE

  WHEN THE BOY had gone I glanced at my watch. It was only twelve-fifteen, but I was hungry and figured I probably deserved an early lunch anyway. Some comfort food seemed very much in order, which to an American abroad generally meant a cheeseburger, so I headed out Sukhumvit to a local joint called Bourbon Street popular with American expats.

  The origins of Bourbon Street have been lost in the mists of Bangkok expatriate history, meaning they go back more than five years. There is a rumor that the place was originally opened by a retiring CIA station chief who loved his hometown of New Orleans but wasn’t all that anxious to move back to it since his wife lived there and he had found far more congenial companionship in Bangkok. Regardless, if Bangkok had a cop bar, it wasn’t the smoky little go-go joint down in Nana Plaza most people would imagine, it was Bourbon Street. On any
given night you could find enough heavily armed DEA, FBI, CIA, Secret Service, and Diplomatic Security Service guys there to strike fear into a small country.

  I turned off Sukhumvit into Washington Square and circled around an old-time movie theater that had found new life hosting a transvestite review for Japanese tourists. A snappily uniformed parking guard whistled me into a vacant space and ushered me out of my car with a salute so crisp it would have brought tears to the eyes of General Patton.

  Inside, Bourbon Street was a cool, dim haven from the midday sun. One of the girls behind the bar started making a glass of iced tea as soon as she saw me come through the door and I grabbed an International Herald Tribune off the rack at the door and made my way to a table in the back. When a waitress brought me the iced tea, I ordered my cheeseburger with a side of onion rings. I was just opening the IHT when Bourbon Street’s owner wandered over and plunked himself down across from me.

  “Hey, man,” he said as we shook hands. “How yawl doin’?”

  Doug’s southern accent had remained so strong during the couple of decades he had lived in Thailand that I half suspected he practiced with tapes just to keep it sharp.

  “Doing fine, pal,” I answered. “How’s business?”

  “Business is great. Real great. A lot of new Yanks in town for some reason.”

  “Really?”

  I wasn’t particularly interested, but Doug was a convivial fellow and shooting the breeze with him for a few minutes was one of the attractions of hanging around Bourbon Street.

  “Come to think of it, one of them was asking about you the other day,” he said.

  Now I was interested.

  “Somebody was asking about me? Asking what?”

  “Aw…nothing really. Just if I knew you. If you came in much. That kind of thing.”

  “And that was it?”

  “Yeah, pretty much,” Doug nodded. “Well…actually he did ask one other thing that I thought was a little weird.”

  “Weird?”

  “Yeah, he asked if you came in alone or if you were with Anita most of the time.”

  “Huh,” I said, not being able to think of anything else.

  “He even asked if you ever came in with women. I mean other women. Other than Anita.”

  “Who was this guy doing all this asking about me?’

  “I don’t know,” Doug said. “Just a guy.”

  “Did he know you?”

  “No. Well…now that you mention it, I guess he did. He came over and shook my hand and said he really enjoyed the jambalaya. You know I’ve got my own crayfish farm now and—”

  I interrupted Doug before he could get too far into his commercial.

  “Did he tell you his name?” I asked

  “He must have, Jack, but I just can’t remember. I hear so many names in this place.”

  A woman who looked tired and didn’t smile much put a cheeseburger down in front of me along with a plate filled with onion rings. She took my nearly empty tea glass away and handed it over the bar where another woman refilled it.

  “What did this guy look like?” I asked.

  “Oh, hell…” Doug twisted his eyes toward the ceiling and seemed to think about it. “American, I guess. Average size. Wore glasses. Shoot, man, I don’t know how to describe people.”

  The woman walked around from behind the bar and put the fresh glass of tea next to my cheeseburger. Then Doug stood up and stuck out his hand.

  “Hey, enjoy your burger,” he said. “I gotta go. Playing golf this afternoon.”

  “In this heat?” I asked as we shook hands again.

  “Yeah, well, we got all them little girls to carry umbrellas and keep us in the shade while we’re walking around,” he winked. “Some of them’s not half bad.”

  Doug took a couple of steps away and then stopped. He looked back over his shoulder and pointed his forefinger at me.

  “There was one thing,” he said. “This guy who was asking about you was a black guy, and he was dressed all in black, too. Looked pretty weird if you ask me, man.”

  “A black guy dressed all in black?”

  “Yeah, I almost pissed myself laughing after he got out the door.” Doug gave me a little wave. “See you, man.”

  I reached for the mustard, lifted the top of my burger bun, and shook out a generous dollop. I piled on some onions, a slice of tomato, a couple of pieces of lettuce, sprinkled salt and pepper over the whole mess, and closed it back up. I pushed down and crunched the burger together until it was about the right size for my hands, then I lifted it and paused as I always did to savor its profoundly American aroma.

  Well, damn, I thought to myself as I took a big whiff. That sounds an awful lot like Marcus York, doesn’t it?

  I wondered if it really had been York and, if it was, if he had been snooping around about me entirely on his own or if CW had put him up to it for some reason. And regardless of whose idea it was to start asking around about me, what the hell was the reason for it?

  I skimmed through the sports section of the IHT while I ate and I thought some more about what Marcus York might have been up to, but nothing obvious came to me. Then when my plate had been cleared away and I had a cup of coffee in front of me I turned to the front page to read the real news. The white ceramic mug was up to my lips and I was just about to take my first sip when I spotted the story.

  Plato Karsarkis Associate Killed in Bangkok Shoot-Out, the headline read.

  Just below the headline was a picture of Mike O’Connell.

  The photo had obviously been taken when O’Connell was much younger, and he was ducking away from the camera as if he wasn’t particularly enthusiastic about being photographed, but it was the Mike O’Connell I knew. No doubt about it.

  I put my coffee down and spread the paper out on the table. Taking it slowly, I read the story through once and then I went back and read it again.

  According to a wire service report from the Agence France-Presse, about eight on the previous evening O’Connell had been leaving an apartment building in the Sukhumvit Road section of Bangkok. He was walking from the door of the building to a waiting car when a shot from a sniper rifle entered his left eye and exploded in his skull killing him instantly.

  No one had heard the shot, which suggested strongly that the rifle from which it was fired was silenced, and it appeared likely that the shooter had been several floors up in a neighboring apartment building since that was the only place from which anyone would have had a clear field of fire down into the courtyard where O’Connell’s car was waiting. A Thai security guard had drawn a weapon, apparently a handgun, although the story was vague on the point, and he had gotten off three shots in the general direction of the building, although apparently he hadn’t hit anybody and it wasn’t even entirely clear what he might have been aiming at.

  The rest of the story was sketchy and provided no other useful details about the shooting. It consisted mainly of speculation as to what O’Connell might have been doing at an apartment in Bangkok with an armed security guard, and whether that meant Plato Karsarkis himself was in Bangkok, perhaps close by or even in the building O’Connell had been coming out of when he was shot.

  It was hardly necessary for me to speculate, of course. Tommy and I had left that same building only a few minutes before Mike O’Connell was murdered.

  If a sniper lying in wait in the building next door really had shot O’Connell, he would certainly have already been there when Tommy and I had come out of the building ourselves. No doubt he must have been watching us, too. He would have been checking us out, tracking us with the crosshairs of his telescopic sight as we got into Tommy’s Mercedes.

  I rubbed a hand across my face. Good Lord, was a silenced sniper rifle tracking me when I walked across that courtyard outside Plato Karsarkis’ apartment? I took a deep breath, let it out, and read the story a third time.

  Not surprisingly, when I finished it nothing had changed. Mike O’Connell was still dead and th
e Thai police still had no clue who the shooter was. The taste of hamburger in my mouth slowly changed into something sour and metallic.

  THIRTY

  THE FIRST THING I did when I got back to my office was get a Montecristo out of my humidor and light up. I took a long, full draw, rolled the sweet smoke around in my mouth, and exhaled slowly as I tilted back in my chair and swung my feet up on the desk. Perhaps a cigar struck most people as a peculiar choice of tranquilizer, but it always worked just fine for me.

  After a half hour or so of nicely anesthetized reflection, I was no closer to deciding whether Mike O’Connell’s murder had anything to do with me than I had been the first moment I saw the headline in the IHT. I glanced at my watch, then dumped the remains of my cigar in an ashtray, collected my notes, and headed for the elevator. Murder or no murder, I had a three-o’clock class to teach.

  My lecture was uneventful, as much for my students as for me, then afterwards I had a string of conference appointments and I manfully slogged through every one. Very few of my appointments had anything to do with wheedling a better grade out of me, which is the way I figured they would usually go back in the States. Instead, the most popular topic with my students by far was how I could help them score a place in a prestigious American MBA program. Since I really didn’t have a clue, those conversations were mercifully short.

  By a little after five-thirty the procession ended and I tried again to call Anita to tell her I was going to Darcy’s for dinner. Now there was no answer at all at the apartment and Anita’s mobile number continued to connect me directly to her voice mail. I couldn’t figure out where she was and I was starting to worry a bit. I wasn’t sure why or what I could do about it, but there it was anyway. It was after six by then so I let it go, locked up the office, and headed for Darcy’s house.

  Darcy and Nata lived in the oldest part of Bangkok, an area not far from the King’s palace, but there was nothing particularly stylish nor fashionable about the neighborhood so few foreigners ever ventured out there, which I thought was a pity. Around dusk, along the grassy banks of the canals that still crisscrossed the area, food vendors lit their charcoal cooking fires, the cicadas began to rumble in the trees, and a soft purple haze filled the air. In the mid-city financial district, the part of Bangkok where most of the foreign community lived, everything seemed forced. The breakneck conversion of rice fields into a forest of high-rise apartments and acres of glitzy shopping malls felt temporary and superficial, as if it could all be swept aside in an instant and no one would really care. But the old city seemed real somehow, substantial and resistant to time. The colors were brighter, the smells were richer, and the sounds were warmer. As the lights came on in the late twilight of a moist tropical evening, everything about it felt whole and sweet and true.