“DO YOU WORK for CIA, Robert?”
Darling inhaled and blew the smoke out very slowly.
“Everybody in my business either works for the CIA or with the CIA, Shepherd. The little dogs follow the big dogs. If you don’t, you get eaten.”
That wasn’t exactly an answer to his question, of course, but Darling looked like he was still trying to decide how much more to say. Shepherd gave him a little nudge.
“Then let me ask the question this way. What is Robert Darling’s involvement in all this?”
“I’m just helping Charlie. I’m his friend.”
“Come on, Robert, don’t treat me like a dick. There’s a lot more to it than that.”
“Charlie and I are partners in Blossom Trading. Blossom Trading sells armaments.”
“Who do you and Charlie sell arms to?”
Darling said nothing. He looked as if he hadn’t even heard Shepherd.
“Are you arming the Thais?”
“Not all the Thais. We’re selling to Charlie’s people. And we’ve sold some stuff to the Muslim separatists. We’re not amoral, Shepherd. We only sell to the guys who have the same aims we do.”
“And what aims are those exactly.”
Darling smiled. “To restore good government to Thailand.”
“Is that what Adnan was doing for you in Thailand that got him killed? Restoring good government?”
“I don’t answer to you, Shepherd.”
“But you answer to somebody. And my guess is that you answered to somebody about Adnan. Did Adnan’s head and his body end up in separate places because you fucked up, Robert? Did you fuck up and get Adnan killed?”
“Adnan is—”
“Was.”
“Adnan was,” Darling corrected himself, “a man who sometimes overplayed his hand.”
“With who?”
“Look, the demands from the Muslims were getting out of hand. Adnan seemed to be the right man to explain to the little pricks that there are limits as to how much support we can give them.”
Darling took a long pull on his cigarette and exhaled slowly.
“In retrospect… maybe that wasn’t the case,” he finished.
“So Adnan was decapitated by Muslim separatists?”
“They’re melodramatic motherfuckers, aren’t they?”
“So you’re saying you sent Adnan to tell the Muslim separatists to toe the party line and they killed him?”
Darling shrugged. “Maybe they have a problem with authority figures.”
“And who’s the authority figure here? You?”
Darling shrugged again. Shepherd was getting really tired of watching him do that no matter how good at it he was.
“Let’s just be absolutely clear here,” Shepherd said. “What you’re telling me is that the CIA is controlling and coordinating the opposition in Thailand to the present government. Both the Muslim separatists and Charlie’s red shirts.”
Darling held up both hands, palms out. “Hang on, Shepherd. I never said anything like that.”
“Yes, you did.”
Shepherd pointed over Darling’s shoulder to the hanger with the green roof.
“There’s an airplane in there that’s been carrying your arms shipments into Thailand. You’ve flying into a strip in the south that’s under the control of the Muslim rebels, leaving some of the weapons there, and taking the rest of them north to Bangkok by road.”
Darling looked down, took a final puff on his cigarette, and flicked it away. He didn’t say anything.
“Your airplane is on charter to a company called Trippler Aviation. Trippler Aviation is well known as a CIA front company.”
It might have been a bit of a stretch to say that it was well known. But what the hell, Shepherd thought. He was rolling.
“The registered owner of the airplane is the Kitnarok Foundation. You are a foundation trustee just like I am, Robert, so you should know that. Do you? Do you know that?”
“Where are you getting all this shit, Shepherd?”
“That’s really not the important question, is it? The important question is what Charlie knows. Does Charlie know his foundation owns an airplane that’s been chartered by the CIA to smuggle arms into Thailand, arms that are being used to start a civil war and overthrow the Thai government?”
Darling stood up so abruptly that Shepherd involuntarily leaned back. Darling reached across the picnic table and poked him in the chest with his index finger.
“You self-righteous, insignificant little piece of shit,” he screamed. “Who the fuck do you think you are?”
Darling poked harder and Shepherd leaned further back.
“There are rules to this game and there are lines you don’t cross, Shepherd. You’re nothing. We can crush you like a bug.”
Shepherd said nothing. It was hard to sound tough sitting at a picnic table while Darling was standing over him pushing a finger into his chest.
“Get out of our way, Shepherd. If you don’t, I’ll end your inconsequential little life without a second thought. Do you read me, mister?”
Shepherd slapped Darlings finger aside and slid off the bench. But by the time he had gotten to his feet, Darling had turned his back and was striding angrily toward the hanger.
“Don’t go away mad, Robert,” Shepherd called after him.
Darling didn’t answer or even look back. He just raised his right hand above his shoulder, extended his middle finger, and kept walking.
***
AFTER DARLING DISAPPEARED into the hanger, Shepherd stood there for a moment and thought about his options. Or he would have thought about them if he’d had any options to think about. As far as he could tell, he was fresh out. The book of matches that Darling had tossed away was on the table right in front of him. He sat back down, picked it up, and twisted it back and forth through his fingers while he replayed in his mind everything Darling had said.
He had rattled Darling’s cage. He had no doubt he had at least done that much. But otherwise it looked to Shepherd like he had pretty much blown it. He had heard Darling’s justification for what he was doing, but he didn’t know anymore about how Darling was doing it than he had before. What was Tommy’s role? And where the hell was Charlie?
The impound order on Harvey wouldn’t hold up for long. Shepherd’s guess was that it wouldn’t take Darling more than a day or two to get the Agency to come down on the UAE government and have it lifted. That meant in not much over forty-eight hours Harvey would be back on the ground in Thailand and the guns would be flowing.
Thailand was already coming apart. Reds and yellows were in the streets bashing each other with bats and iron bars, and random bombings targeting foreigners were holding Bangkok hostage to terror. Putting automatic weapons into the hands of the red shirts’ street fighters would trigger a full-scale slaughter. But what could he do about that in forty-eight hours? Shepherd had absolutely no idea.
He stopped twisting the matchbook in his hand and glanced down at it. Registering the crest on the cover, he raised his eyebrows in surprise. The matchbook was from the Duke of Wellington in Bangkok. Shepherd thought back to his meeting at the Duke with Pete Logan, the FBI’s man in Thailand. It was shortly after that Logan had told him the FBI had no interest in either Robert Darling or Blossom Trading.
So what was Darling doing now with a book of matches from the Duke of Wellington? Probably that was no more than a coincidence. Hundreds of people drank and smoked in the Duke every week. Having a book of matches from there only meant that Darling had been in Bangkok at some point, which was hardly surprising.
But what if it wasn’t a coincidence? Thailand was a very small place and people sometimes turned out to be connected to each other in surprising ways. He needed to keep that in mind.
Shepherd stood up from the picnic table, shoved the book of matches into his pocket, and trudged back to the Land Cruiser.