WHEN KEUR SAID he knew somebody at the airport, Shepherd pictured a brawny Arab baggage handler wearing baggy shorts, a wrinkled T-shirt, and floppy socks. What he did not picture was a tall, blue-eyed German woman with long blond hair, a white suite that looked like Armani, and white pumps that looked like Jimmy Choos. And he really didn’t picture someone with a front porch on which you could park a helicopter.
“Jack Shepherd, meet Rachel Rein,” Keur said. “Rachel is Emirates Airlines Group Vice-President of Security.”
“Why have you never told me you have such a good-looking friend, Lenny?”
Lenny? Shepherd shot Keur a quick look. He remembered Keur introducing himself as Special Agent Leonard Keur, of course, but somehow ever since he had stopped thinking of Keur as the sort of person who had a first name. And he absolutely didn’t seem the sort of person who had a first name like Lenny.
“Are you with the FBI, too, Mr. Shepherd?” Rachel asked.
“Nope,” Keur cut in before Shepherd could answer her. “Jack’s a bag man for a corrupt Thai politician.”
“Ah Jesus,” Shepherd muttered.
“A bag man?” Rachel smiled. “How fascinating. I have never met a bag man before.”
Shepherd wanted to say something in his own defense, but he wasn’t quite certain what it would be. Sadly enough, Keur’s characterization of his occupation wasn’t completely inaccurate. He settled for doing his best to look indignant and said nothing.
“Look, Rachel,” Keur said, completely ignoring Shepherd’s display of umbrage, “I’m sorry to drop in on you unannounced like this, but—”
Rachel cut Keur off with a hug and a kiss on the cheek. “Nonsense, Lenny. You know I am always happy to see you. Sit down.”
Shepherd had expected to be in a smelly freight shed in some forgotten corner of the airport talking to a baggage handler who smelled more or less like the shed. Instead, here he was in a snazzy office at the headquarters building of Emirates Airways ogling Miss Deutschland of about 1995. He settled back on the butter-soft leather of one of Rachel’s very expensive sofas and awaited developments.
“Coffee?” she asked.
Keur and Shepherd both accepted. Rachel called somebody to serve it and while she was on the telephone Shepherd looked around her office. One entire side was floor-to-ceiling glass with a panoramic view of Terminal 1, the building occupied entirely by Emirates Airways. He had always thought the Emirates terminal was an odd-looking structure, long and thin and half round on the top, like a bead of toothpaste that had been squeezed across the field from a giant tube of Crest. Rachel’s office looked a lot better: cream-colored leather sofas, thick carpet the exact shade of a correctly made cappuccino, and two giant Sony flat panels mounted on the wall opposite her desk. One was showing CNN and the other was showing BBC News, both with their sound muted.
Keur sat down next to Shepherd. Rachel hung up the telephone and smiled at him.
“So what can I do for you, Lenny?”
“I’m calling in that favor you owe me. I need some information, but I can’t tell you why I need it.”
“Ah,” she said, “a mystery. I love a mystery. Are you some kind of a spy, Lenny? You say you are FBI, but I have never really believed you. I have always wondered if you are really a spy.”
Keur looked away and cleared his throat.
“What do you think, Mr. Shepherd?” Rachel asked, turning those big blue eyes on him. “Is our friend Lenny here really with the FBI? Or do you think he is some kind of a spy?”
“I certainly hope not.”
“Rachel sees spies everywhere,” Keur cut in. “She was a deputy director of the BKA before she joined Emirates.”
Shepherd had no idea what Keur was talking about and it apparently showed.
“The Bundeskriminalamt,” Keur explained. “The German Federal Criminal Police.”
“The BKA is like the FBI, Mr. Shepherd,” Rachel said. “Only much, much smarter.”
There was a knock on the door and a chubby, middle-aged woman entered carrying a wooden tray with three cups of coffee. They fell silent until she had served. Then she left again, closing the door behind her.
“Could we get back to the point now?” Keur said after she did.
“Oh, you had a point, Lenny?” Rachel winked at Shepherd. “And what might that have been?”
“There is an aircraft we are interested in that we think will be landing here very soon. Probably at about…”
Keur stopped talking and looked at Shepherd.
“At about two-thirty,” Shepherd said, picking up the story from there. “It’s a 737. An all-freight configuration. And it will be coming from Thailand, I think.”
“Bangkok?” Rachel asked, sipping at her coffee.
“I don’t know for sure. The flight originated in Bangkok, but they filed for Phuket first. Then from there to Dubai. But the plane never landed in Phuket. My guess is it landed somewhere else, probably at a private strip not far from Phuket. Wherever it went, I think it will be coming to Dubai from there.”
Rachel didn’t ask any of the obvious questions. Shepherd assumed that was because she had some kind of a relationship with Keur that made her think she could trust him. He hoped she was right about that.
She just pulled a pad toward her and picked up a pen. “Do you have a tail number?”
“A6-NSU,” Shepherd said.
“A UAE registration.”
It wasn’t a question, so Shepherd said nothing.
She wrote down Harvey’s registration number and then glanced back up and held Shepherd’s eyes for a moment.
“Whose aircraft is this?” she asked.
“It’s being operated on charter by Trippler Aviation.”
Rachel tapped the point of her pen against her pad a couple of times, then put the pen down. “Do you know anything about Trippler Aviation?”
“A little,” Shepherd said. “Enough probably.”
Rachel looked at Keur. “Do you know who actually owns this aircraft, Lenny?”
Keur pointed at Shepherd.
“Well then, Mr. Shepherd,” Rachel said, shifting her eyes to his. “Can you tell me who owns this aircraft you’re so interested in?”
“No,” Shepherd said, “I can’t.”
“Can’t?” Rachel asked, “Or won’t.”
“Let’s just say it would be better if I didn’t. Better for you.”
Rachel nodded and looked down at her desk. She picked up the pen again and went back to tapping the point against her pad.
“We think the aircraft is coming into Dubai to pick up cargo,” Keur said after a minute or two had passed in silence. “All we need is to find a way to delay its departure until we’re certain what’s on it. And where it’s going.”
“That’s all?” Rachel laughed.
Neither Keur nor Shepherd said anything.
“Is this official, Lenny?”
“Depends what you mean by official.”
Rachel looked from one to the other and thought about that.
“Is this aircraft bringing cargo into Dubai?” she asked after a moment. “Or just carrying cargo out?”
“We don’t know for sure.”
“Are we dealing with drugs here?”
“No,” Keur said. “Arms and ammunition.”
Rachel’s face showed no reaction.
“Do you know who’s servicing the aircraft in Dubai?”
“No.”
“Do you know where on the airport it will be parking?”
“No idea.”
“For two reasonably intelligent men, you don’t know very much, do you?”
Keur and Shepherd both shifted their eyes away to the windows and said nothing.
Rachel pursued her lips and made little popping sounds. Abruptly she dropped her pen, looked straight at Shepherd, and pointed at him with her index finger.
“What’s he got to do with all this, Lenny? Who is he really?”
“I’m his lawyer,” Shepherd answered before Keur could say anything.
Rachel actually chuckled at that.
“It’s true,” Shepherd said. “I really am.”
“Lieber Gott,” Rachel said, shaking her head. “Another spy.”