THE NEXT MORNING Shepherd showered and shaved while he waited for room service to deliver breakfast, then he watched CNN some more while he ate. There was really nothing new about the attack on Charlie and no information at all about the identity of the gunmen, which seemed odd. He wondered if the information was being withheld for some reason and, if so, by whom, and why. That was something he would have to ask Charlie.
Along with a whole hell of a lot of other things, of course.
Shepherd got dressed. Then he went downstairs and hired a hotel car to take him out to Charlie’s villa on Palm Jumeirah.
***
PALM JUMEIRAH IS a palm-shaped projection into the Persian Gulf which, like much of Dubai, is entirely artificial. In a spectacular demonstration of either inspiration or hubris, Shepherd could never decide which, tens of millions of tons of sand had been dredged up from the sea bottom, compacted into a series of graceful arcs resembling palm fronds, and then connected to the mainland by a slightly wider spit of sand representing the trunk.
The trunk of the tree is filled with cheesy apartment buildings, but the arcs of land representing the fronds of the palm tree are given over exclusively to private houses expansively referred to as villas, more because of their outrageous cost than any grandness of design. The houses are laid out on each palm frond in two lines along opposite sides of a single roadway. Most of them are undistinguished, even tacky.
Charlie owned both houses at the very end of Frond G, where he had created a small compound by building a high wall and placing a security gate across the end of the road. With the wall forming one side of the compound and the Persian Gulf surrounding the other three sides, the place was as secure as any private home in Dubai could be. Shepherd sometimes wondered what it had cost Charlie in gratuities to local government functionaries to pull that off, but he had never asked.
When the hotel car pulled up at Charlie’s security gate, Shepherd got out and a brown-uniformed guard directed the driver where to park. The guard gestured for Shepherd to raise his arms and ran a wand over his body. Then he asked for Shepherd’s passport and inspected it carefully. Eventually the guard handed it back, tilted his head, and murmured something in Arabic into a shoulder mike. The gate slid open just far enough for Shepherd to walk through.
The two houses in the compound were very similar. Two stories, high-pitched red-tiled roofs, tan stucco siding, a great many arched windows, double front doors of polished wood, and a few fake pillars and gables stuck here and there for decoration. The house on the left where Charlie lived with his wife Sally looked to be the more hospitable of the two since it had a long terrace paved in dark brown ceramic tile that ran the length of the second floor. The house on the right that had been converted into an office had nothing to recommend it. It was as plain as a self-storage warehouse.
Shepherd rang the bell at the house where Charlie lived and a maid who appeared to be Filipino opened the door and showed him into Charlie’s study. After a few minutes she returned with a pot of coffee and two china cups on a silver tray, then she closed the door behind her and disappeared. Shepherd poured himself some coffee, sat down one of the two facing love seats upholstered in yellow silk, and waited.
***
CHARLIE CAME THROUGH the door talking on a cell phone. He said uh-huh a couple of times while he poured himself some coffee with his free hand, then he said uh-uh once more, hung up, and put the phone in his pocket. He settled himself on the other love seat, took a sip of coffee, and looked at Shepherd over the rim of the cup.
“You okay?”
“I’m fine.”
Charlie nodded absentmindedly, his mind apparently on things more important than the current state of Shepherd’s health.
“How’s your head?” Shepherd asked.
Charlie looked puzzled. “What are you talking about?”
“Your head,” Shepherd said, tapping his own with his finger just in case the word was unfamiliar to Charlie. “The cut you got when I pulled you down.”
Shepherd didn’t mention hearing Charlie say on CNN that his injury came from being grazed by a bullet.
Charlie shrugged and looked away, but he didn’t say anything. Shepherd would have liked to think he was embarrassed, but he doubted it. Charlie had just been a politician milking the moment and politicians were hard to embarrass.
“There was a lot of coverage,” Charlie said after a moment. “CNN, Fox, BBC, ITN, even Al Jazeera.”
“It was entertaining television.”
“Great stuff!” Charlie said. “Great!”
Maybe Churchill had been right after all. Charlie, at least, seemed to lend support to his theory.
“Have they identified the gunmen yet?” Shepherd asked.
Charlie shook his head.
“Nobody’s taken credit?”
“You think credit is the right word to use here, Jack?”
“Sorry. You know what I mean.”
Charlie sipped at his coffee again. He didn’t say anything else, but Shepherd wasn’t ready to give up. Lawyers ask questions. It’s what they do.
“Were the gunmen locals?”
Charlie shrugged.
“You have no idea where they came from?”
“Probably imported. Iraqis maybe.”
“If somebody was going to bring in a couple of hitters to go after you, why would they hire two boobs like that?”
“What do you mean?”
“Come on, Charlie. Those had to be the world’s lousiest assassins. The attack was stupidly planned and badly executed. Those idiots didn’t even hit anybody.”
“They killed the woman. That news producer.”
“No, they didn’t. Your bodyguards killed her. They weren’t much better shots than the guys who came after you.”
“It’s hard to get good help these days.”
“Maybe that’s it,” Shepherd said.
But he didn’t think it was.
“Anyway, that’s not really the point,” Charlie said, looking genuinely annoyed.
“No? Then what is the point?”
“The point is who hired those guys.”
“Okay, so who hired them?”
Charlie shot Shepherd a hard look. “You know who it was as well as I do.”
“No,” he said. “I don’t.”
“Oh, come on, Jack. You of all people ought to know exactly who it was. You understand what’s happening in Thailand now.”
“Pretend I don’t. Explain it to me.”
Charlie smiled slightly at that. He put his cup down on the table between them, leaned back, and folded his arms.
Shepherd nodded encouragingly. Not that Charlie really needed any encouraging.
“It’s a mess. It’s been a fucking mess ever since I left.”
Shepherd said nothing.
“A lot of people want me to become prime minister again. But there are other people who would kill me to prevent something like that from happening, to stop me from coming back.”
“I didn’t know you were thinking of going back.”
“I was just speaking hypothetically. As long as I’m alive, I could go back to Thailand. If I did, I’d be prime minister again in a week. You know how many people want me to do that?”
“How many exactly?” Shepherd asked. “Not counting the army.”
Charlie gave him a half smile. “I thought you were on my side, Jack.”
“I am on your side, Charlie. You pay me a lot of money to be on your side.”
“Would you be on the other side if they paid you a lot of money?”
“It depends on how much it is. I’m a lawyer. I’m always paid to be on somebody’s side.”
Charlie laughed, but Shepherd could also see him wondering if he was serious about that. That was understandable. He was wondering, too.
Charlie’s cell phone rang and he pulled it from his pocket and glanced at the screen.
“I’ve got to take this, Jack. Would you excuse me?”
Shepherd stood up. When he left the study, he closed the door behind him. He noticed Charlie remained silent until after he did.