I spent the night a?t Panwaburi, the same hotel where Anita and I had stayed the last time we had been in Phuket. Maybe that wasn’t a good idea, but I did it anyway. The next morning I had coffee and toast from room service, then I got in the Cherokee and headed for Plato Karsarkis’ house. Karsarkis wasn’t expecting me-at least not as far as I knew-but there wasn’t anybody else left for me to annoy.
The day was so bright the air seemed almost white. The world was a cloud of light veined with streaks of blue. I couldn’t remember ever experiencing light that intense before. Although my sunglasses were as dark as pitch, the day scratched at my eyes like sandpaper.
Once through Phuket Town I punched it and made the turnoff from the main highway to Karsarkis’ estate in less than half an hour. Driving west on the two-lane asphalt I passed through the eerie, symmetrical ranks of rubber trees that had been my main landmark on my previous trip and a couple of miles later I turned onto the loose-packed gravel of the narrow track that led to Karsarkis’ gate.
As I took a curve around a grove of palm trees I was surprised to find a dark gray minivan blocking the road. I slowed to a crawl to slip by it and had just registered that the van looked to be American, perhaps a Chevrolet, when a man stepped out from in front of it and raised his right hand at me, palm out like a traffic cop.
Ordinarily I wouldn’t have pulled over, but the man was a westerner who looked vaguely familiar. He was dressed in some kind of khaki uniform. There were no insignia on it, at least none that I could see, but he had a holstered sidearm on his hip.
I lowered my window and the man walked slowly toward me with one hand resting casually on the butt of his pistol. He reminded me of a highway patrolman making a traffic stop, and that was when I realized why he looked so familiar. He was the man who had been with Marcus York at the Blue Lotus Pub in Patong the night CW and I had watched the katoeys boogieing down on Soi Crocodile.
He looked me over carefully. “You’re Jack Shepherd, aren’t you?”
“Yes.”
“I’m-”
“I know who you are. I just don’t remember your name.”
“Chuck Parker,” he said. “Deputy United States Marshal.”
“Right.”
“Could you step out of the vehicle, sir?”
“What?”
“I asked if you’d step out of the vehicle, sir. We just need to have a quick word with you, and then you can be on your way.”
“I’m fine here,” I said. “Say whatever you want.”
Chuck Parker first looked surprised and then he looked confused. He didn’t seem accustomed to having people say they weren’t going to do whatever he told them to do. Now that someone had, he wasn’t all that certain what to do about it. His head swiveled back and forth on his fleshy neck as if he was searching for help. When I heard the open-handed slap against the Cherokee’s passenger door, I knew he had found it.
“Move it, asshole.” Marcus York slammed the door with his palm one more time for good measure. “Get out of the fucking car.”
From the first moment I had met York something made me wonder about him. I didn’t have the slightest idea what he was if he wasn’t really a marshal, but right at that moment it?hat mome didn’t matter. Playing with Chuck Parker was one think, but looking into Marcus York’s hard black eyes right then left me with no doubt that playing with him would be quite another, regardless of who he might be. I opened the door and got out of the Cherokee.
“A rental?” Parker asked, looking it over.
“What?”
“I asked you if this was a rental, sir.” Parker gestured unnecessarily at the Cherokee.
“Yes,” I said, “it is. But why do you care one way or another?”
Parker didn’t answer. Instead he pointed to the gray minivan.
“Would you step over there please?”
I nodded my head and followed Parker. When he opened the van’s sliding door I saw the interior was bigger than I would have expected and was fitted out with all kinds of things. There were two upholstered benches at right angles and in front of them was a low table with storage space underneath. At the very rear of the minivan was a floor-to-ceiling rack of electronic equipment. I didn’t know what it actually was, but I doubted it was a stereo system.
Parker gestured for me to get inside and I did. I took the bench facing forward and Parker took the other one.
“You are on your way to see Plato Karsarkis, are you not?”
“I am,” I said.
“Are you armed, sir?”
“I’m sorry?”
“It’s a simple enough question. Are you armed?”
“Only with my sly wit.”
Parker nodded as gravely as if I’d given him a perfectly sensible answer. Since York hadn’t joined us in the minivan, I was just starting to wonder where he had gone when the obvious answer occurred to me. York was searching my Cherokee.
“Look,” I said to Parker, “when are you two Brylcreem buckaroos going to tell me what this is all about?”
“You think you’re a real funny guy, don’t you, sir? With the wisecracks and all that stuff?”
“People either love it or hate it. I’d say it’s about fifty-fifty. How about you, marshal? What’s your vote?”
Parker looked at me without expression. I thought he was about to say something, but then he seemed to think better of it. Instead he reached under the table, lifted up a metal case about the size of a cigar box, and unsnapped the top. Nested inside surrounded by a thick lining of white Styrofoam was something that looked like a tie clip.
“This is the transmitter we’d like you to wear while you’re up at Karsarkis’ place, sir. It has an effective range of about two miles and we think that-”
“Hang on,” I said holding up one hand. “Is this is some kind of a joke?”
Parker looked genuinely puzzled. “No, sir. It’s not a joke.”
“Then what on God’s green earth ever put it in your head that I might be willing to do anything remotely like that?”
Parker’s eyes shifted back and forth in confusion and his head wobbled slightly on his thick neck.
“CW said you’d be willing to cooperate. That you’d help us out, you being an American and all.”
“He did, did he?”
“Yes, sir. He did.”
“And what do you think, Parker? Do I seem to you to be a cooperative kind of guy?”
My question caused a momentary look of panic to slide across Parker’s face. Evidentially thinking wasn’t a big part of his job description.
Parker had produced the case from beneath the low table between us. While he wrestled with my question, I ran my eyes over the other storage compartments.
“What else you got down here?” I asked, yanking on the handle nearest my ankles.
A drawer glided smoothly out on silent rollers and inside in foam-rubber padded mounts were two M-16s with laser sights and built-in noise suppressors. I slid one of them out and worked the action. It was Teflon-coated to reduce noise. Very spiffy.
“Just imagine,” I said looking at Parker, “I’d always thought US Marshals carried six-shooters.”
York appeared in the minivan’s open doorway before Parker could say anything. He stood looking at me for a moment and then he reached out and jerked the M-16 out of my hands.
“Get out,” he said, gesturing with his head toward the ground next to him.
“My pleasure.”
I got up from the bench. In a half crouch to keep from hitting my head, I pushed myself out of the minivan.
“Find anything interesting in the Cherokee?” I asked York as I shouldered past him.
He turned, following me with his eyes.
I still couldn’t see York as a marshal. He had an air about him that was entirely different, a sense of knowing something I didn’t know, something that maybe nobody else knew; and knowing whatever it was gave him a pass from the rules that applied to the rest of us. But then that meant York must be. . what? FBI? Secret Service? Military? CIA? None of those seemed exactly right to me either, but what else was there?
I wasn’t sure what I was supposed to do next. Still, this was York and Parker’s party, so I figured I’d let them tell me.
“You know what Karsarkis has done,” York said eventually. “Why are you protecting him?”
“Why are you going to kill him?”
That wiped the smirk off York’s face, but I didn’t much like the look that replaced it.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“I think you do. I also think you killed Mike O’Connell, but I don’t understand why.”
That made York smile for some reason.
“Get the fuck out of here,” he said, after he got tired of smiling. Then he turned away, climbed into the minivan, and slammed the sliding door.
The rest of the way up to Karsarkis’ house the road ran through a massive mangrove forest. Tree branches scraped at the sides of the Cherokee as I crunched slowly over the hard-packed gravel.
Just past Karsarkis’ driveway another gray minivan sat across the road and blocked it entirely to anyone coming from the opposite direction. Two men leaned against the side of the van, arms folded, watching me. I didn’t recognize either of them, but they were both westerners and both wearing the same khaki uniforms an?i uniford carrying the same sort of sidearms Parker and York had been carrying.
After turning into the driveway the road became much smoother and I followed a thorny hedge until I got to the green metal gate. The Thai guards who had been there on my previous visit were nowhere in sight this time. Instead, a slim, fair-haired man in jeans and a plaid shirt stood smoking and talking to another equally Irish-looking guy who had what appeared to be an AK-47 hanging off his shoulder. They glanced at me as I got out of the Cherokee and the man in the plaid shirt stopped talking. They spread apart slightly as I approached, but neither man seemed particularly concerned.
“Can I help you?” Plaid Shirt called out when I was still twenty feet away.
An Irish accent. No doubt about it.
“I’m here to see Plato Karsarkis,” I answered, stopping about halfway between the Cherokee and the metal gate.
“And who would you be, mister?”
“Jack Shepherd.”
“Are you expected?”
“Not unless somebody is clairvoyant.”
Plaid Shirt gave me a look I couldn’t read, but it didn’t appear to contain a great deal of admiration for my sense of humor. Then he said something to the other man too softly for me to catch and the second man unclipped a walkie-talkie from his belt. He lifted it to his lips and turned his back to me.
“Look,” I said, figuring I probably ought to be playing this one straight. “Tell Karsarkis that Jack Shepherd wants to talk to him. I’m sure he’ll be happy to see me.”
Plaid Shirt dropped his cigarette onto the crushed rock of the driveway and ground it out with the heel of his boot. Then his hand went behind his back and produced a large-caliber automatic. He held it dangling at his side rather than pointing it at me, but the distinction didn’t seem particularly important under the circumstances.
“Just stand where you are, mister.”
The other man turned back around and returned the walkie-talkie to his belt. Slipping the automatic rifle off his shoulder, he racked the cocking lever and walked past me to the Cherokee. He made one circuit of the vehicle peering through the windows from a slight distance, then he got much closer and made another. He opened both the front and rear passenger doors and inspected the Cherokee’s interior carefully, stepping up into the doorframe and leaning over the backseat to get a clear view into the rear cargo area. When he was apparently satisfied, he stepped down again and nodded to Plaid Shirt who looked up over my head toward a tree where I assumed a security camera was located. He lifted one hand, gave a little rolling motion with his index finger, and the metal gate began to slide open.
“I’ll be riding up with you, mister,” Plaid Shirt said.
I nodded and got back behind the wheel of the Cherokee while Plaid Shirt climbed into the front passenger seat. He cradled the automatic casually in his hand, but he kept the barrel pointed more or less at my chest all the same.
Beyond the gate the roadway was asphalt. Neither Plaid Shirt nor I spoke as I drove uphill though a vividly green jungle of mangroves, rubber trees, and coconut palms with bright red lashings of bougainvillea here and there. When I reached the clearing where Karsarkis’ house surveyed the sea from atop a rise, Plaid Shirt pointed with his free hand toward where I thought the swimming pool and tennis court were.
“Park back there, mister.”
I drove across the grass and stone courtyard, circled the fountain, and followed the driveway off to the left. When it ended at the small parking area next to the tennis court, I nosed the Cherokee toward the fence next to a silver Jaguar that was the only other car there and cut the engine.
“The boss is by the pool. You walk around-”
“I know where it is,” I interrupted.
“Oh, do you now?” The man sounded amused, although I couldn’t see at exactly what.
I got out and closed the door, but Plaid Shirt didn’t move. He stayed in the Cherokee, slouched down in his seat, and leaned against the passenger door as if he was preparing himself for a long wait. He could sit there forever as far as I cared. I jammed my hands in my pockets and walked toward the swimming pool.