Jake Needham - Killing Plato

“Okay, Tommy,” I finally said. “Whatever.”

“Good call.”

“I’m so glad you approve.”

“Downstairs then,” he said. “Now.”

And with that he hung up.

I closed my phone and sat looking at it for a moment. Tommy worked hard at being obscure. I gathered he thought spies were supposed to be obscure. Generally, the effect was comic, but occasionally it was irritating. I put today down in the irritating column.

By the time I got downstairs I was wound up enough to give Tommy a boot in the ass for jerking me around, but the building lobby was empty and I found myself deprived of an immediate target. I stood there for a moment looking around, but it was a very small lobby so that was a pretty pointless exercise. Empty was empty.

Not having any better idea what I was supposed to do I walked outside and stood at the top of the steps. That was when I saw the black Mercedes parked in the circular drive with the engine running. It looked like the same car in which Tommy and I had ridden out to Karsarkis’ hideaway. At least I thought it was the same car because it had the same kind of darkened windows and sliding curtains, bug chad rit it might have been a different one. I couldn’t tell, and when I thought about it for a moment, I also realized I really didn’t give a damn.

April is the heart of the hot season in Thailand. Although it wasn’t even eleven yet, the sun was already brutal. I could feel the heat in the concrete through the soles of my loafers. As I walked toward the Mercedes, it was like taking a stroll on a warming tray.

When I was still fifty feet from the car both front doors opened in near perfect synchronization and two men I’d never seen before got out. They were athletic-looking locals wearing nearly identical white shirts, black pants, and dark neckties, and they were both expressionless behind their opaque sunglasses. I recognized government security when I saw it no matter what country I was in and either that’s what these guys were or they had seen Men in Black way too many times. The driver stepped away from the car and moved back a few strides, his head swiveling slowly back and forth. Then the man who had emerged from the other side went to the rear passenger door and held it open without taking his eyes off me. It was a silent yet unmistakable command for me to get into the car.

Taking my own sweet time about it, I sauntered over and got in. When I did I discovered the car was already pretty crowded. There were two people in the back seat, and neither one of them was Tommy. The two passengers were a man and a woman. I recognized both of their faces immediately, but I couldn’t remember where I had seen them before.

The woman in the middle of the back seat appeared to be in her late thirties, although I could never really tell with Thai women. She was stylishly dressed in a cream silk suit with matching heels. Sitting straight, her bare legs crossed at the knee, she dangled a shoe off the toes of one foot which caused her straight skirt to ride up well above her knees and leave her smooth brown thighs very agreeably displayed. When the white-shirt-and-tie muscle outside closed the door behind me, he shoved me up tightly against the woman, which I had to admit I didn’t really mind at all.

The man, on the other hand, was short and sallow and middle-aged. He wore a dark suit that appeared expensive, although it also looked like it hadn’t been pressed since the day he had bought it. I assumed he had to be an Englishman, mostly because of his bad teeth and worse complexion and the puckered look on his face that suggested a terminal case of constipation.

“Good morning, Mr. Shepherd,” he said without looking directly at me. “Thank you very much for coming.”

His voice sounded familiar, too, but I still couldn’t place him. Regardless, the accent was unquestionably English public school, so I gathered my first impression had been right.

“Well, gee,” I said, not offering to shake hands. “How could I refuse?”

The Englishman said nothing in response, but with my arm still pressed against the woman’s side I thought I felt a little ripple of amusement roll through her body. Then perhaps I was mistaken about that. Around beautiful women all men tend to be irrationally hopeful that they are being regarded as witty and charming. It’s pure genetic programming.

The driver and the guy who was riding shotgun had resumed their places in the front of the car. The Englishman leaned forward slightly and spoke to the driver.

“ Okay, pai gun teu ,” he said. “ Bork duay ta mee krai tam ma .”

The man spoke Thai so colloquially I almost missed what he was saying, but his accent left me wcenkraith little doubt he was completely fluent.

Let’s go, he had said, and let me know if you pick up anybody tailing us.

The driver put the car into gear and we rolled slowly around the driveway and out into one of the many small streets that ran through the campus. I assumed the driver would turn right toward busy Phayathai Road, the main artery that bisected the campus north to south, but he didn’t. Instead he turned left, drove behind the National Stadium, and then turned left again on a quiet residential street that led in the general direction of the Chao Phraya River.

Neither the man nor the woman said anything else and I certainly had no intention of giving them the satisfaction of asking what the hell was going on. I concentrated instead on trying to figure out where I knew these two from. I had seen them both recently, I was reasonably sure, but where? And had I seen them together or had I seen them separately?

I was still trying to work that out when the man twisted his body around until he was half facing me and laced his fingers around one knee.

“My name is Smith.”

“Really?” I said. “What an unusual name.”

“I could give you a lot of rubbish, but you probably wouldn’t believe it anyway, so let’s just jump right to it. I am with the British Embassy and I work there in an intelligence capacity.”

That stopped me for a moment.

“You’re Tommy’s boss?” I asked the man. “You’re telling me Tommy works for British intelligence?”

The woman spoke for the first time. “No, Mr. Shepherd,” she said.

Her voice was so soft I had to bend toward her slightly to hear her words. Her rounded tones and deliberate intonation were an even more obvious if less blatant sign of a childhood spent in English public schools than the man’s overly plummy accent had been.

“I’m Tommy’s boss,” she continued. “I am the Director General of the National Intelligence Agency.”

I examined the woman’s face for some sign she was joking. I saw none.

“I’m speechless,” I finally said.

“Somehow I doubt that.”

The woman smiled slightly when she spoke. I noticed it was a very nice smile, particularly for a spook.

“Okay,” I admitted, “maybe not. But I had no idea the head of the NIA was a woman.”

“Really? And now that you know, why are you so surprised?”

“Well…” I tried to think of a diplomatic way to put it. “On the whole Thailand is something of a man’s world, and generally one thinks of Thai women as-”

“Maids and whores, Mr. Shepherd?”

I glanced at the woman. When I saw she was still smiling, I was greatly relieved.

“Seventy-five percent of the university graduates in Thailand are women,” she continued. “We probably run more major companies and are responsible for more meaningful decisions here than in any nation on earth. My personal belief is that in another decade most Thai men will be driving motorcycle taxis and this will be the world amp;rsquoecisionss foremost matriarchal society.”