SHEPHERD WAITED IN the hallway outside Charlie’s study until he began feeling foolish just standing there doing nothing, then he walked to the end of the hall and out onto the big terrace behind the house. The terrace was paved in glazed titles the color of Hershey Bars and dotted with outdoor furniture, all of which looked uncomfortable. Shepherd chose a high-back rattan chair that seemed slightly better than the rest, dragged it around until it faced the sea, and propped his feet up on a glass-topped coffee table with an iron base.
It was a nice day by Dubai standards. The air was warm without being hot and there was a light breeze off the sea. Just beyond the breakwater, two black rubber boats filled with UAE commandos drifted on the glassy smooth surface of the Persian Gulf. Each of the boats carried four men dressed in black, automatic weapons slung over their chests. One of the men peered at him through a pair of field glasses. Shepherd gave him a friendly wave, but the man didn’t wave back.
After about ten minutes Charlie walked out and sat down next to Shepherd. He had put on a pair of sunglasses with gold metal frames, which caused Shepherd think of the tortoise shell sunglasses Charlie had worn in the souk, the ones that had fallen off when he went down behind the burlap-wrapped bales and hit his head. Shepherd had no doubt those damned glasses would turn up on eBay someday.
“There’s obviously something on your mind, Jack. What is it?”
Shepherd couldn’t see Charlie’s eyes through the sunglasses, but his face looked earnest enough and the question seemed to be entirely serious. Shepherd stood up and walked to the edge of the terrace. He doubted there were any lip readers among the commandos in the rubber boats but, if there were, it certainly wouldn’t have been the weirdest thing he had ever encountered in Dubai. Just in case, he turned his back to them before he spoke to Charlie again.
“What did you mean inside when you said people were willing to kill you to keep you from going back to Thailand?” he asked.
Charlie glanced over Shepherd’s shoulder at the two rubber boats full of UAE commandos.
“This is neither the time nor the place to talk about that,” he said.
“Are you going back into politics?”
“This is neither the time nor the place to talk about that.”
“I don’t do politics.”
“I’m not asking you to.”
“I’m a lawyer. I shuffle papers. I organize corporations. I argue with banks. That’s all I do.”
“I understand that.”
Shepherd could feel in his bones that something was about to happen here that he wasn’t going to like. He thought about telling Charlie right then he didn’t want any part of whatever it was. He thought about it, but he didn’t tell Charlie that. Later, looking back, he would always wonder how differently things might have turned out if he had.
Charlie stood up and moved to a different chair, one that put his back to the watching commandos. He swung his feet up onto the glass and iron table and took off his sunglasses.
“Sit down, Jack. There’s something we need to talk about.”
Charlie pointed to a chair that would put Shepherd’s back to the commandos as well and Shepherd walked over and sat down.
“Some guys are trying to fuck me,” Charlie said.
“Some guys are trying to kill you,” Shepherd said. “In my book, that’s a lot worse than fucking you.”
“That’s not what I’m talking about,” Charlie said, waving away Shepherd’s wisecrack. “I mean those pricks at the Ministry of Finance in Thailand. They’re trying to grab my money.”
“I didn’t know you had any money in Thailand.”
“It goes back to before we started working together. There are some accounts at Bangkok Bank and some more at SCB. I need for you to sort them out for me.”
Bangkok Bank was Thailand’s largest bank and SCB was Siam Commercial Bank, the second or third largest. They were both good places to have money in Thailand, if you had to have money in Thailand at all.
“Sort it out how?” Shepherd asked.
“Get it out of the country. All of it.”
“How much are we talking about?”
“Maybe in all, say, five or six hundred million.”
Six hundred million Thai baht was a little less than twenty million US dollars. Not an insignificant sum, of course, but less than Shepherd was often called on to handle for Charlie.
“Five or six hundred million baht shouldn’t be any problem,” Shepherd said.
Then he noticed that Charlie was looking at him like he had suddenly begun speaking in tongues.
“Not baht, Jack. I wouldn’t care if it was just baht. Dollars. US dollars. Five or six hundred million US dollars.”
Oh, right, US dollars. Five or six hundred million US dollars. Of course.
“I want you to get your ass to Bangkok. I’ll get everything gathered up in Bangkok Bank for you. I’ve got a contact there. You talk to him and get everything shifted to Hong Kong, then you can bury it in some nominee companies.”
“Look, Charlie, I don’t—”
“Leave tonight. Those pricks are really trying to fuck me.”
“I don’t want to go to Thailand.”
“I know you don’t.”
“I told you I wasn’t going back there again.”
“I wouldn’t ask you to go if it weren’t important. You’re the only person I can trust with something like this.”
“Look, Charlie, even if I went to Thailand, I’m not sure how much good I could do you.”
“You know more about moving money than anyone I ever met, Jack. You’re a goddamned wizard when it comes to stuff like that.”
“I appreciate your confidence, Charlie, but—”
“But nothing. When the Asian Bank of Commerce collapsed, how much was in the wind? Five hundred million? And it was all CIA black money, wasn’t it?”
Shepherd said nothing.
“Your old pals back in Washington were running around shrieking like a bunch of little girls. Somebody had fucked them, too.”
Shepherd said nothing.
“But you worked out the scam, didn’t you? Then you tracked down the money all by yourself and you got it back. And I’ll bet to this day there’re not more than five people in the whole world who even know it was you who figured the whole thing out.”
“Is that the way you think it happened?”
“That’s the way it did happen.”
Shepherd shrugged. “A penny saved is a penny earned.”
“What the fuck does that mean?”
“I’m a big fan of clichés. They say so much and require so little effort.”
Nothing useful could come of telling Charlie what really happened to the money from the Asian Bank of Commerce. A lot of people had died trying to grab that money. Some of them were good people and some of them were not so good. But in the end everything had turned to crap and the good and the bad alike had both shared exactly the same fate. They had all ended up losers. Shepherd didn’t want to talk about it. He wasn’t going to talk about it.
So Shepherd cleared his throat and changed the subject back to the money Charlie wanted to get out of Thailand.
“You know as well as I do that we would have to get permission from the Bank of Thailand to move that much money out of the country.”
“I know.”
“And I really don’t think—”
“When you get there, go to Bangkok Bank. See a guy named Tanit Chaiya who’s an Executive Vice President in the head office on Silom Road.”
“I didn’t say I’d go, Charlie.”
“All Tanit needs from you is a structure he can use to make it all look okay. Some kind of overseas corporate acquisition will do it. Tell him we’re buying the Eiffel Tower or some goddamn sports team in the United States. Just make it look good.”
“If that’s all there is to it, why can’t I just draft something after I get back to Hong Kong and email it to this guy?”
“Because the Bank of Thailand wouldn’t approve the transfer if that was all you did. They’re not going to approve it at all without a little persuasion.”
Shepherd nodded, but he didn’t say anything. He could see now where this was going.
“You with me here?” Charlie asked.
“How much persuasion?”
“I’d say a couple of million would probably get the job done. Maybe a little less or a little more. Use your own judgment. I don’t know exactly how they’re going to play it when we try to move the money, but I know what the bottom line is going to be. That’s why I need somebody there to look them in the eye and make sure this gets done. Buying people is easy. Making sure they stay bought is a lot harder.”
“You’re making me uncomfortable here, Charlie.”
“Yeah, I know.”
“I’m not going to get involved in bribing the Bank of Thailand. The US government takes a dim view of that sort of thing. Americans go to jail for bribery.”
“This isn’t a bribe.”
“Then what would you call it?”
“It’s like ransoming a kidnapped child. Americans don’t put people in jail for paying ransoms, do they?”
“I doubt the Department of Justice would look at this quite that way.”
“I’m not going to sit here and let them steal my money, Jack. That’s not right.”
“No, it isn’t,” Shepherd admitted.
“I’ve got to pay a few people if I want my money back. That’s the way business works in Thailand. You know that.”
“Yes, I know that, but still—”
“So I’m asking you to take care of this for me, Jack. If I can’t do something myself, you’re my guy.”
“I’m flattered.”
“I’m just looking after my own interests here. You’re the best. You know everything there is to know about international corporate structures and banking operations. You’re Mozart with money. You can make chicken salad out of chicken shit.”
“Far be it from me to sound modest, but—”
“And I trust you,” Charlie interrupted. “You’re smart, you’re tough, you’re connected. And you’re an honest man. That’s why I hired you.”
A silence fell and they both sat back for a while and just watched those black rubber boats drifting on the Persian Gulf. It was a companionable silence. Shepherd liked Charlie no matter what some people said about him. He even liked all the outrageous bullshit Charlie got involved in. Charlie was good for more outrageous bullshit in a day than most men were in their entire lifetimes.
The truth of the matter, Shepherd knew full well, was that managing outrageous bullshit was what he was good at. Managing outrageous bullshit was what he did for a living. Sometimes he even wondered if he could do anything else.
After a moment Charlie started talking again. “I’ve asked Adnan to pull together the documentation on the Thai accounts for you. You can start with that. If you need anything else, just ask him and he’ll get it for you.”
“Is Adnan here?” Shepherd asked.
“He’s over in the office,” Charlie said, gesturing vaguely in the direction of the other house across the compound.
Adnan was Charlie’s personal assistant. He was in his forties, slight with slicked-back hair and pale skin, and he claimed to be Lebanese. Shepherd didn’t think Adnan really was Lebanese, but he had never challenged him on the point. After Charlie fled Thailand two steps in front of a flood of corruption charges and settled in Dubai, Adnan had taken on the vague title of personal assistant. Shepherd didn’t know for certain what Adnan actually did for Charlie, but what he did know for certain was that he really didn’t like Adnan. Adnan clearly didn’t like him either, so Shepherd figured they were square all around.
“What’s really going on here, Charlie? I need to know.”
“I thought you didn’t do politics, Jack.”
“Assassination attempts and bribing central banks isn’t politics.”
“It is in Thailand.”
Shepherd said nothing. Charlie did have a point there.
“You can’t have it both ways, Jack.” Charlie leaned forward and rested his forearms on his knees. “Either you’re part of everything here or you’re a lawyer who just looks after financial matters for me. We can do this either way, but you need to decide which way it’s going to be.”
Shepherd didn’t say anything for a moment. He just sat and looked at Charlie, and Charlie just sat and looked back.
“I don’t do politics,” Shepherd repeated after a minute or two had passed like that.
“Fine.” Charlie stood up and rubbed his hands together. “So you’re my lawyer and you look after financial matters. Then go to Bangkok and rescue my money. Go right now. You want to take one of the planes? Use the G-4.”
“No thanks,” Shepherd said. “I like flying commercial.”
Charlie chuckled and shook his head. “You’re really a piece of work, Jack. Here I put a thirty million dollar jet at your disposal and you tell me you’d rather drag your ass out to the airport, stand in the security line, and take a commercial flight. What the hell am I going to do with you?”
What was Charlie going to do with him? It was a question Shepherd had asked himself from time to time, although he suspected in a somewhat different context. He had never come up with a particularly satisfactory answer either.
“So are you going to do this for me, Jack?” Charlie asked. “There’s no one else I trust.”
“It’s only money, Charlie.”
“Yeah, but it’s a lot of money.”
Shepherd sighed and pulled a small notebook and a pen out of his pocket.
“What was the name of that guy at Bangkok Bank again?”