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.