THE KING OF MACAU (The Jack Shepherd International Crime Novels) (16 page)

Was it only a coincidence? That was a little hard to believe, no matter how much I might want to think so. The details of the story were all perfect. They suggested foreknowledge, not coincidence. Freddy knew about the announcement before it was made. Simple as that.

Okay, so Freddy did have some connection with North Korea, but that didn’t necessarily prove that he was a North Korean intelligence officer, did it? Still, it proved something, I had no doubt about that. Now all I had to do was work out exactly what it was…

I FINISHED MY MARTINI,
dropped enough money on the table to cover my bill, and walked back to the MGM with the Wall Street Journal Asia tucked under my arm. Up in the suite I opened my laptop and checked the major news sites: CNN, BBC, Fox, The New York Times, and The Washington Post. Everybody had the story. I even checked the South China Morning Post and the story was there, too. Had I missed it when I searched through the SCMP this morning for the story fingering me as digging into a money laundering operation at the MGM? No, of course I hadn’t. I would have spotted it in a moment. The story must not have hit the wires until after the edition of the SCMP I had read was closed.

All the major news sources had the same story, but none of them had any more details than had been in the Journal. Which is to say, no details at all.

So now what? Was I going to call Freddy like he had asked me to and get sucked into whatever was going on with him? Or was I just going to do the job Pansy had hired me to do and spend my idle hours ducking triad soldiers pissed at me for outing their money laundering operation?

I fished around in my briefcase until I found the white card on which Freddy had written the number to what he said was a clean cell phone. It was nestled right next to the little ivory envelope with Anita’s handwriting on it. I took out both the card and the envelope and laid them beside each other on the desk.

Picking up the white card, I walked back over to the sofa and sat holding it and looking at the number for a long time. I told myself I was trying to decide whether I was going to get involved with Freddy, but I wasn’t really. I knew perfectly well that my curiosity was in full control of my good sense and I was helpless to do anything else.

I dialed the number on the card from my cell phone. When a robotic voice answered and announced I was connected to voice mail, I left this message: “Hello, my friend. Just letting you know I’ll be back in Macau at eleven o’clock tonight. Perhaps we can catch up while I’m here. Call me. Bye.”

If I had correctly understood what Freddy told me, he would interpret that to mean we would meet in front of the Hall of Benevolence at the Ah-Ma Temple at eleven o’clock tomorrow morning. And if I hadn’t correctly understood what Freddy told me, I wouldn’t meet anybody when I went back to the Ah-Ma Temple tomorrow at eleven o’clock. I could live with either outcome.

AFTER I HUNG UP
I sat on the sofa for a while doing absolutely nothing, thinking absolutely nothing. Eventually I took a Montecristo out of my briefcase, cut it, lit it with a wooden match, and stood in front of the window looking out at the sky and smoking quietly. I tried my best to keep on thinking nothing, but it didn’t work. Sooner or later I was going to have to decide sometime what to do with that damned envelope with Anita’s handwriting on it. It wasn’t going to disappear.

It had occurred to me that the envelope looked a little like a wedding invitation, but I didn’t really think it was. It was too small and, besides, Anita might be many things but she was not a cruel person. Sending me a wedding invitation would serve no purpose other than to inflict pain, and surely Anita knew that.

I walked over, picked up the envelope and propped it against the big crystal ashtray on the coffee table. I sat down, leaned back against the thick cushions, and idly flipped a box of cigar matches around in my left hand while I drew on my cigar.

What could be in the envelope? A bill for something? No, of course not. Anita’s key to our old apartment in Bangkok? Now I was getting silly. A note asking me to contact her? That really seemed the only reasonable possibility, didn’t it?

I thought for a while about where Anita might be living, and who she might be living there with. Back when we were married Anita and I had lived in one of Bangkok’s tonier apartment buildings. I had been teaching at Chulalongkorn University and Anita had been painting. Her large and colorful canvases had made her modestly famous in some European art circles.
Surely she was still painting,
I thought, but of course I didn’t really know.

Sally had said she bumped into Anita in London, but that didn’t mean Anita was living in London, did it? A lot of people visited London. Anita had been born there, which made it likely she might be visiting there.

I was going around in circles, of course, and I wanted to stop. I wanted to stop thinking about Anita altogether, but as long as that damned envelope was sitting there staring at me I was powerless to do it. Was I going to open it and read what was inside, or wasn’t I?

And all at once I saw exactly what I was going to do. As with so many other big decisions in life, I didn’t know when I had decided. I only realized that I had already decided.

I continued to smoke my Montecristo and think about it for a while. There would be no going back, of course. So I wanted to be sure. I wanted to be absolutely sure.

I smoked the Montecristo right down to the butt and gave myself as much time as possible to reconsider, but eventually it was finished. I bent forward, gently tapped the cigar out against the bottom of the ashtray, and dropped what was left of it inside.

I was sure. I was absolutely sure.

I slid open the box of wooden matches I had been turning around in my hand and I lit one. I held the ivory envelope between my thumb and forefinger and moved one corner back and forth through the flame until the paper caught. I shook out the match, but I continued to hold the burning envelope until the heat became too much for my hand. Finally I dropped it into the ashtray and flipped the spent match in on top of it. I sat very still and watched until nothing was left of the envelope except curly wisps of black ash scattered over the remains of my cigar. And I kept watching until the flame had burned itself completely out.

After a while I stood up and walked over to the window. The neon of the casino signs were burning hot in the soft grey light of the early evening and they infused Macau with a shimmering radiance I hadn’t really noticed before. The hard, unpleasant edges of a tough town had been blurred into blemish-free beauty. Suddenly Macau was like an aging movie star with great makeup, better lighting, and a Vaseline-smeared lens.

It didn’t look half bad to me…

IT WAS A LITTLE
before eleven the next morning when Shepherd got out of a cab in Barra Square. Freddy was sitting behind the wheel of a dirty brown Toyota parked in a little cul de sac at the bottom of Rua da Barra. The car was so nondescript as to be functionally invisible and, exactly as Freddy had intended, Shepherd didn’t pay the slightest attention to him.

Freddy had a clear view of most of the square and he watched as Shepherd walked toward the temple gate. He wasn’t an expert in surveillance, but he knew a little bit about it, and he was reasonably certain Shepherd wasn’t being followed. The movement of people around him all appeared random. No one seemed to speed up or slow down in response to Shepherd’s pace.

He gave it a few minutes so he could be sure, but when nothing changed he got out of the Toyota and walked slowly through the square, following more or less the same path Shepherd had followed.

When Freddy reached the temple gate he stopped suddenly, spun around, and started walking quickly back to the car as if he had forgotten something. He wasn’t absolutely sure, but he thought he saw sudden movement out of the corner of his eye so he stopped again and looked around very slowly like a man trying to decide what to do. Which was exactly what he was.

Had that movement been someone who had him under surveillance? He thought it might have been possible that Shepherd might have watchers, but he was pretty certain that he was in the clear. Had he been careless and missed something?

When he got back to the Toyota, Freddy slid behind the wheel again and carefully scanned Barra Square, but he saw no one who looked out of place or who seemed to be paying the slightest attention to him. He had probably been mistaken about the sudden movement. But still…

He watched a while longer and thought about whether he should walk away to be on the safe side. If he took much longer to make up his mind, he knew he wouldn’t have anything to decide because Shepherd would get impatient and leave. He read the man as somewhat abrupt and frequently cranky. Those weren’t really bad characteristics in a protector, but Shepherd was still a long way from becoming his protector, wasn’t he?

He had to make up his mind right now.

Go, or walk away?

This might well be the best chance he would ever have. And he didn’t like the idea of blowing it out of nothing more than paranoia. He had grown up with paranoia. Paranoia was part of his soul. He thought he had to learn to control it, not let it control him. He supposed it was time to find out if he really had.

He took another careful look at Barra Square. When he still saw nothing unusual, he shook his head, got back out of the Toyota again, and walked toward the temple.

SHEPHERD WAS SITTING ON
the same rock in front of the Hall of Benevolence where he had been sitting the first time they met. Apparently a man of habit. Or perhaps there wasn’t anywhere else to sit. That was possible, too, he supposed.

“You’re late,” Shepherd snapped as soon as he saw Freddy coming up the steps. “It’s hot out here.”

It was hot. Shepherd was right about that. Freddy tried to shape his face into an appropriately apologetic expression. That’s how westerners saw Asians, wasn’t it? Mild mannered and deferential? He didn’t do those things very well. Was that how he would have to behave all the time when he was in Hawaii? If it was, God help him.

“I am very sorry,” Freddy murmured in what he thought was the correct tone of voice. “I was only being careful.”

“Careful about what?”

“I thought there might be some possibility you were being followed.”

Shepherd looked surprised at that, but at least it seemed to shut him up.

Freddy stood close enough to Shepherd not to have to speak loudly and turned his body slightly to the side so he could watch the steps behind them while they talked.

“You saw the story in the newspapers?” he asked.

“I saw it.”

“So now you believe that I have knowledge worth trading for political asylum?”

“Now I believe that you know someone in North Korea, or maybe you know someone who knows someone in North Korea. That’s all that newspaper story tells me. That’s all I believe now.”

Freddy had not expected Shepherd to be so hard to persuade. He had expected Shepherd to be more interested, more enthusiastic. He had very little experience dealing with Americans, almost none really. Were they all this skeptical of everything?

“I want to go to Hawaii. I want you to get me political asylum in Hawaii.”

Freddy instantly regretted both what he said and the way he said it. He sounded petulant, like a kid addressing a parent who was denying him a treat. He had to be careful about that. He didn’t want Shepherd to feel he had control of the situation.

Shepherd smiled, but he didn’t say anything.

“What else can I tell you,” Freddy asked, trying for a recovery, “to convince you to help me get political asylum in America? “

“You could start with who you are.”

Freddy hesitated. Yes, he could tell Shepherd who he was. He had no doubt at all that would get Shepherd’s full and undivided attention. But he wasn’t ready to do that yet. He wasn’t sure yet that he entirely trusted Shepherd. And besides, that was his last card. If he showed it now, he would have nothing left. He had learned that from his father, at least. Always have one card to play that nobody expects. That is how you stay on top of people. You keep them guessing.

“I am sorry, but I cannot do that yet.”

“Then, pal,” Shepherd said as he slid off the rock into a standing position and offered his hand, “it’s been nice knowing you. I wish you all the best.”

Out beyond Shepherd’s outstretched hand, Freddy noticed the two men coming up the steps from below. They caught his eye because they both wore cheap looking grey suits with white shirts and ties that glinted like polyester. No one wore a suit in Macau, at least no one visiting the Ah-Ma Temple at high noon.

Both men had on very dark glasses that hid part of their faces and it took a moment to register with Freddy that they were Koreans.

But the moment it did, he knew he was in trouble.

THE TWO MEN STOPPED
about thirty feet away and moved slightly apart. They took their time about it, and their movements were slow and measured. For a moment he had the crazy thought that these two guys were about to break into a coordinated dance routine. Sort of a Korean version of the Blues Brothers. But then Freddy saw both men reach under their jackets almost simultaneously, he saw the butts of the handguns coming into view, and he stopped kidding himself.

Shepherd obviously noticed the alarm on Freddy’s face and began to turn his head to see what had caused it. For a moment Freddy felt almost like a disinterested observer. Would Shepherd get his head around before the men started shooting at them, or would the gunfire come as a complete surprise to him?

To Freddy’s surprise, Shepherd began to react before his head was more than halfway through its turn. Both arms drove straight out, palms open and extended, and he shoved Freddy toward the big rock on which he had been sitting. Freddy stumbled and fell, but fortunately rolled a few feet down the hillside behind the rock. Shepherd dived down right on top of him. At the same moment Shepherd landed, two shots ricocheted off the rock right where they had been standing.