THE KING OF MACAU (The Jack Shepherd International Crime Novels) (8 page)

The man was a middle-aged Asian who was round-shouldered and carried more weight than he should for his height. His hair was thinning and what was left of it was cut extremely short. He wore plain, rimless glasses and was dressed in a black, long-sleeved shirt, black chinos, and black loafers. The weight and the glasses made the man appear soft. He made me think of a very large stuffed toy. He looked exactly like the fat kid in elementary school everybody made fun of during recess when the teacher wasn’t looking.

Was Freddy Chinese? I couldn’t quite decide. The guy certainly wasn’t Japanese. Korean? That was a possibility.

It always embarrassed me a bit that I wasn’t able to distinguish one Asian nationality from another with any certainty no matter how long I lived in that part of the world. It wasn’t that Asians all looked alike. Well, the truth was they do look a little bit alike, but I wouldn’t be caught dead uttering that old racist-sounding canard. It was just that I simply couldn’t tell them apart. There’s a difference there, but it’s hard to explain.

The man marched straight up to me and held out his hand. His clothes smelled like a damp wood fire. It was the smell of the clouds of incense drifting around the temple. I probably smelled the same way to him.

“You are Mr. Shepherd, are you not?”

Thank Christ the guy spoke English. I had forgotten to ask Raymond about the language thing. If the guy hadn’t spoken English, this would have turned into the shortest conference with a prospective client I had ever had.

I pushed myself off the rock and we shook hands.

“Yes, I’m Jack Shepherd,” I said. “Do you really want me to call you Freddy?”

“Yes.”

“Okay,” I shrugged. “It’s your dime.”

A puzzled expression slid over Freddy’s round face. “My dime? What is a dime?”

“It’s…an American expression. Has to do with pay telephones.”

“You want me to talk to you on a pay telephone?”

“No, that’s not what I meant.”

“Then what do pay telephones have to do with this meeting?”

“Nothing.”

Freddy seemed to consider that for a moment, but he nodded his head very slowly without saying anything.

“Forget the pay telephone thing,” I said, “but let’s get something straight right now. I’m only here as a favor to Raymond. I don’t normally meet prospective clients like this. Usually they’re happy to come to my office.”

That wasn’t exactly true, I had to admit to myself. Not many of my clients called meetings at temples, that part was true enough, but damn few of them wanted to be seen going in or out of my office either.

“I’ve got a lot to do,” I said, cutting off that particular course of introspection before it went too far. “So let’s get to it. Why are we here?”

“I wish to apply for political asylum in America.”

“Then you’re talking to the wrong guy. I’m only a lawyer. I can give you the name of a Foreign Service officer at the American consulate in Hong Kong. You should be talking to him.”

“I do not wish to sound arrogant, but I have something very big to offer in return for asylum. You do not offer something this big to a clerk at a consulate.”

I chewed at my lip and studied the guy. He didn’t seem like a nutcase, and anyway I doubted Raymond would have sicked an out-and-out screwball on me. My gut told me Freddy was sincere, but…well, it didn’t really matter, did it?

“I don’t know anything about immigration law,” I said. “I don’t know anything about political asylum cases. I’m the wrong man for you to talk to.”

“You were the right man for Plato Karsarkis.”

Christ, was there anyone on the whole planet who didn’t know about that?

Plato Karsarkis had for a while been the world’s most famous fugitive. He even became a cause for some people, a sort of international version of O.J. Simpson. Karsarkis had hired me to cut a deal for a presidential pardon. He had something to trade, too, something big enough to be worth the deal, and I tried to help him make it.

Things hadn’t worked out particularly well. Not for Karsarkis, not for some of the other people who got involved, and certainly not for me. Johnnie Cochran walked O.J. out of the courthouse and Cochran became a hero for a whole lot of people. My association with Plato Karsarkis was less successful. All it got me was sacked from the university where I was teaching.

The outcome may not have been my finest hour, but dealing with Karsarkis forever changed the way I saw the world. I had never trusted governments, but I had always believed there were limits to how far they would go to protect themselves. Now I knew differently. Now I knew there were no limits at all to how far they would go.

“Plato Karsarkis isn’t a reference I use very often. Never, actually.”

“He needed you because you could take his case right to the White House. That’s why I need you, too.”

“Even if I could, what do you have that’s worth taking to the White House?” I asked.

“If I tell you, I will have given up everything and gotten nothing in return. Would you do such a stupid thing, Mr. Shepherd?”

No, of course I wouldn’t.

“YOU’VE GOT TO GIVE
me something,” I said after the silence stretched almost to the breaking point. “Tell me who you are. Tell me what you have that would make you important enough to be worth someone’s attention. You can’t ask me to buy a pig in a poke.”

“What is—”

“Never mind. Just give me something.”

Freddy’s eyes rolled around for a moment as if they had suddenly become untethered from his face, and he smiled slightly.

“Within a week,” he said, “the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea will announce that it attempted to arrest an American who was posing as a journalist but who actually entered the country as a spy. They will tell the world that this person was shot while trying to escape and is now dead. That will not be true, of course, but that will be what they say. This person is very much alive and being held captive in North Korea.”

“North Korea?”

Freddy kept smiling.

“Are you Korean?”

He said nothing.

“Are you North Korean?”

He still said nothing.

I knew Macau had connections with what was fancifully known as the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea. Several DPRK banks operated in Macau, their only window on the west, and from time to time stories surfaced about them in connection with international arms sales or drug smuggling or one of the other black businesses that North Korea dabbled in to raise hard currency. I had also heard tales that the North Koreans trained their western spies in Macau so they could learn to mix with westerners before they were sent off to the United States or Europe, but I was less certain those stories were true.

Was this guy a North Korean spy who was offering to come over and bring his knowledge of North Korea’s arms, currency, and drug smuggling with him? If he was, and if he was trusted enough to be posted here in Macau, he could well be the big fish he seemed to be claiming to be.

“What do you want?” I asked.

“I want to go to Hawaii.”

“Doesn’t everyone?”

“And when I am safely in Hawaii, I will tell you everything.”

“Everything about what?”

Freddy shook his head, but he didn’t say anything.

“Look, Freddy, or whoever the hell you really are, that’s not the way this works. Nobody can do anything for you unless they understand what you have to offer. Nobody is going to set you up in Hawaii on the come. And telling me some bullshit that North Korea is going to announce anyway at some time in the future isn’t going to get it.”

“I know that. I just told you to prove I have access to information.”

“Yeah, well, but—”

Freddy held up one hand, palm out like a traffic cop.

“Wait until you hear the announcement. If you are satisfied after that I am important enough to be worth your attention, please call me and we will meet again.”

He dipped into one trouser pocket and produced a white card about the size of a business card. When he handed it to me, I saw it wasn’t a business card at all. Only a plain white rectangle of cardboard with what appeared to be a telephone number written on it in black ink.

“That is a mobile phone that has never been used and cannot be traced to me. But please be discreet. Leave a message saying you will be back in Macau at a certain time. We will meet here again exactly twelve hours after whatever time you give me.”

“Is all this cloak and dagger stuff really necessary?”

“Oh yes, Mr. Shepherd. All this and a lot more. I am taking a grave risk talking to you today. I have already put my life in your hands.”

“So you can go to Hawaii.”

Freddy smiled. “I hear it is very nice there.”

“Nice enough to risk your life for?”

Freddy seemed to think about that for a moment. Then he nodded. “Yes, I think it probably is.”

He nodded again for good measure, turned away, and walked down the steps to Barra Square. I noticed he never looked back.

IT WAS A LITTLE
after one when I got back to the MGM. I hadn’t eaten anything since breakfast other than an ice cream bar, so I went looking for a sandwich and some coffee.

The area between the MGM’s main tower and its casino is a vast vaulted space the hotel calls the
Grande Praça
. I have no clue how to pronounce that and my guess was almost no one else does either.

One end of the
Grande Praça
is said to be modeled on Lisbon’s nineteenth century central train station and the other is composed of a vast sandstone staircase rising what looks to be fifty or sixty feet. In between is a tiled area that’s supposed to look like a European village square. It’s filled with park benches and huge potted trees and lined with shops, sidewalk restaurants, and the false fronts of narrow Mediterranean-styled houses. Above it all soars a curved glass dome supported by graceful white arches.

I walked slowly down one side of the
Grande Praça
and back up the other, stopping to glance at the menus of the restaurants, but everything was far too elaborate to interest me. Surely it was possible to get a sandwich somewhere rather than be required to consume cold lobster flown in from Maine and served with three sauces, so I headed out the south end of the
Grande Praça
and crossed into the casino. The Lion Bar was closed or I might have settled for a beer and some peanuts, and the Chinese cafe in the casino was so jammed with gangs of day-trippers from the mainland that I didn’t even consider it.

I kept moving and soon I was all the way across the casino and out the other side so I decided to cross the street to the Wynn Macau to try my luck there. I walked past the Wynn’s poker pit, circled a bank of slots, and ran straight into a Starbucks.

Perfect.

IT WASN’T A VERY
big Starbucks since it was wedged into a small alcove off the main casino floor. A glass display case filled with baked goods, the coffee-making apparatus, and a cash register were up against the back wall and half a dozen small round tables took up the space between them and the casino floor.

I got myself a large black coffee and a ham and cheese croissant and carried them to the only table that was empty. The rest were filled with other westerners since no Chinese in a casino would even think of wasting time doing anything other than gambling. Certainly not drinking coffee and eating a ham and cheese croissant.

The croissant was surprisingly good and the coffee tasted exactly like it would in Cleveland. I was polishing off the last of both when a man walked up to my table carrying his own cup of coffee.

“Would you mind?”

I glanced up at the sound of the man’s American accent and saw him pointing to the empty chair across from me.

“I’m afraid there’s no place else to sit,” he shrugged apologetically.

“Go ahead.”

“Thanks.”

While the man pulled out the chair and sat down, I took out my phone and thumbed it on. The contemporary smart phone has become an essential ingredient of modern social intercourse. It is useful for occasionally talking to other people, of course. It is also useful for checking emails, sending SMS messages, or reading the sports pages of the New York Post. But the primary use for the contemporary smart phone is to give us something to do so we don’t have to make eye contact with strangers. In an elevator, on the train, or at a restaurant table, staring at your phone is as effective for avoiding other people as putting a bag over your head. And it’s a lot more comfortable.

As useful as my telephone might be as an antisocial device, it didn’t keep me from taking discreet stock of my companion out of the corner of one eye. He was a big man, well over six feet and heavily built. He had long reddish-blond hair, a pale Nordic complexion, grey eyes, and a prominent nose. There was a boyish quality about his face, but I put his age at late thirties, maybe older.

The man was silent for a minute or two, but then he cleared his throat. “You’re Jack Shepherd, aren’t you?”

I don’t much like being recognized. It happens sometimes, but every time it does I feel awkward. I’ve had some prominent clients, probably too many, and I understand that has brought me a certain amount of notoriety. Still, being recognized embarrasses me.

“You were Charlie Kitnarok’s lawyer.”

I nodded without saying anything, hoping my lack of interest in talking about it showed.

“I remember seeing your picture in the newspapers back when Thailand was going through all those troubles. That got a lot of coverage here.”

I nodded again and remained silent.

“I’m Harry Pine,” the man said, holding out his hand.

I took it out of courtesy. What else was I going to do? We shook.

“I don’t mean to bother you,” Pine said, “but it’s a real pleasure for me running into you like this. Look…can I get you another coffee or something?”

“I’ve got a meeting soon,” I lied automatically. “Thanks anyway.”

“But you don’t have to leave right this minute, do you?”

Before I could answer, Pine scooted back his chair and stood up.

“Okay, I’m getting us more coffee. You don’t want it, leave it. Black, right?”