Jake Needham - Killing Plato

“You read this stuff the same way I do, don’t you, Darcy?”

“Yeah, baby, I do.”

I studied Darcy’s face, but it gave nothing away.

“Maybe this is a fake,” I said. “Maybe the NIA put it all together just for my benefit.”

“Maybe.”

“But you don’t think so.”

“No, I don’t,” Darcy said. “What motive would they have for that?”

“Well, for starters…” I trairdquo; Iled off and thought about it.

“I don’t know,” I finally said.

Darcy smiled without humor. “Neither do I.”

“So you think this is all the real stuff.”

“I’d say so.”

I could tell Darcy was weighing her words carefully.

“The form looks right,” she said, “and the text feels right. But there’s no way to be absolutely certain, Jack. There’s just no way.”

I nodded and we sat together in silence for a while as I considered what I knew now that I hadn’t known a few minutes before.

“Even if the email is genuine, isn’t there the possibility of some other interpretation?”

“Sure,” Darcy nodded. “I guess there’s always that possibility.”

“But you think we’ve got it right, don’t you?”

“Yeah,” Darcy spoke as if from behind a mask, “I do.”

I nodded slowly and looked away.

The intercepted emails left everything clearly understood without making it explicit. Whoever sent the emails and whoever received them were both operating on exactly the same understanding. They both knew there was only one possible outcome to the manhunt for Plato Karsarkis.

None of this was about arresting and extraditing Karsarkis anymore. It wasn’t even about kidnapping him. Washington didn’t have the stomach any longer for trying to lock him up. Karsarkis had already shown them how pointless that was.

No, this time it was different.

This time, when they got him they were going to kill him.

Driving home that night I kept the air conditioner on high and the windows rolled up tight. A hot breeze was blowing in from the south and warm tropical evenings ripe with possibilities were generally a perfect time to cruise the city with the wind in your face. On this particular warm tropical night, however, there was something I liked a whole lot about the feeling of security I got from traveling in a closed-up car.

Someone had coolly laid in wait with a sniper rifle right in the middle of Bangkok and put a bullet in Mike O’Connell’s head, and I knew from Doug at Bourbon Street that Marcus York had been in town the night O’Connell died. From what I had just learned about the real reason the US Marshals were in Thailand it was all too easy now to add that up; and I didn’t like the answer I got when I did.

What the hell was going on here? Was I really ready to believe that the cornpone Texan I met in Phuket was actually leading a band of stone killers stalking Karsarkis and all the people around him? Surely not.

But somebody killed Mike O’Connell; and if it wasn’t CW and his United States Marshals, who in God’s name was it?

Darcy and I had stayed out by the pool until just after ten. We sipped coffee and Darcy sat silently over a brandy while I smoked a Montecristo and told her the whole story of my entanglement with Plato Karsarkis. When I finished, she hadn’t said much. She only warned me again to be careful and promised to keep her ears open and let me know what she heard. From some people, of course, that would have been nothing but a kiss off, but from Darcy, it was a pledge of support solemn enough to put in the bank.

I took the expressway home. Gliding along on its elevated structure always made me feel like a ghost skimming over the sprawling yellow glow of the city. Part of the place, yet separate and invisible. It was a feeling I liked a lot.

I wanted nothing to do with Plato Karsarkis, nothing at all; yet I had to wonder if he had any idea what was really out there waiting for him. I wondered, too, who it was in Washington who wanted Karsarkis dead, and who commanded the power needed to turn the United States Marshals Service into a personal hit squad. But most of all I wondered what it was Karsarkis knew that frightened someone so much they were willing to run the risks involved in killing him; and I wondered what Karsarkis might do with that knowledge before they got to him.

By the time I pulled up to the gates of our apartment building it was nearly eleven. The guard poked his head out of the shelter and I lowered the driver’s window and gave him a thumbs up. He jumped to his feet, hauled the gate open, and snapped off a salute. I returned it as I passed inside and I listened to the gate clang shut behind me.

The garage was deserted. I locked the car and took the elevator up to the eleventh floor without seeing anyone. I knew Anita would be wondering where I had been. As I unlocked our front door, it occurred to me that I probably should have left a message on her voice mail, but with all the distractions of the evening I had forgotten.

I entered the dark apartment quietly, not wanting to wake Anita if she had already gone to sleep. Pushing the door closed behind me and muffling the click of the lock with my body, I bent down and flipped on a lamp.

I stared in puzzlement at the two suitcases. They were large bags, and they looked very much like the ones Anita packed for herself when she and I went on long trips together.

Had Anita told me she was going somewhere tonight and I had completely forgotten? God, if I had she’d kill me.

I frantically searched my memory. No, I was certain she hadn’t said anything like that, but then what were the bags doing there? If some emergency had come up, surely she would have called me.

I pulled my telephone out of my pocket and looked at the screen. The date and time glowed back at me as always. No missed calls.

Still trying to work out what Anita’s bags were doing in the hallway, I walked into the living room and switched on the lights.

Anita was sitting in one of the two brown leather chairs facing the windows. She was waiting there in the dark, looking out at the city, her body turned slightly away from me and her hands folded in her lap. She didn’t move when the light came on. She didn’t even blink. She hardly seemed to know I was there. Although I had seen her sit in that same chair many times, it suddenly struck me how small she looked in it, as if either she had shrunk or the chair itself had become mysteriously enlarged.

My first thought was that something had happened, that perhaps she was ill and waiting for me to take her to the hospital. Then she turned her head very slowly and looked at me with an expression I had never seen on her face before, one I couldn’t even begin to put a name to. I knew then that she wasn’t ill. Something must have happened to someone we knew. Something terrible.

“Anita, what-”

“Please don’t say anything for a moment, Jack. Just come in and sit down.”

I walked the length of the living room, growng room,ing more bewildered by the step, but I settled into the second of the pair of leather chairs facing the windows and waited for Anita to tell me what was going on. They were big chairs, deep and cushy, and Anita and I had often sat there in the evenings just like this, drinking after-dinner coffees, listening to music, and talking about our days. I looked at Anita, waiting for her to say something, but she didn’t seem to be in any hurry. She had turned her face back to the windows and I couldn’t see her eyes.

“For God’s sake, Anita, has something-”

“Can’t you do just one thing I ask, Jack?” she snapped before I could finish. “I asked you not to say anything for a moment and the first thing you do is start talking. Why can’t you do just one thing I ask? Just one fucking thing.”