Jake Needham - Killing Plato

“No.”

“That was in 1994. A stolen water truck packed with explosives was in a traffic accident very close to the Israeli Embassy and the Arab-looking man who was driving it abandoned the truck in the street and ran away. The police towed it off and never bothered to look inside, at least they didn’t until it began to smell. When they finally opened the back, they found the decomposing body of the truck’s owner and enough explosives to take a square kilometer out of the middle of Bangkok. We can put Yousef in the room in the Nana Hotel where the detonator was built and the bomb assembled.”

All of a sudden Kate was hitting a little close to home. The Nana Hotel is a third-rate tourist dump immediately across the street from a complex of go-go bars and burger joints where every western male in Bangkok has gone at least a few times, although most refuse to admit to it.

“Then after that came Project Bojinka,” Kate said while I was still trying to calculate the exact distance between the Nana Hotel and my apartment in Chidlom Place.

“I don’t know anything about that either.”

“You don’t know much about what’s been going on in Asia, do you?” Kate gave me a sharp look. “Where in the world have you been, Jack?”

“In Washington,” I answered reflexively, then laughed in spite of myself at what I had just said.

“Yousef built up a terrorist cell in Manila,” Kate went on without smiling. “They rented an apartment there in late 1994 and planned to assassinate the Pope when he came to Manila in early 1995. When Yousef was preparing the explosives, he made a mistake and started a fire. He and the others fled the apartment, leaving behind a laptop computer containing his plans to hijack eleven American commercial aircraft flying over the Pacific on a single day.”

“It’s a lousy excuse, I know, Kate, but no one in Washington pays much attention to what happens in Southeast Asia these days. After China and maybe Japan, the rest of Asia just isn’t on anyone’s radar anymore.”

Kate just sat and shook her head slowly for a moment. When she continued, her voice was tinged with exasperation.

“The files on the laptop made it clear that Yousef was planning to crash the planes into high-profile targets in the United States, including CIA headquarters in Washington.”

I blinked at that, but I didn’t say anything.

“Ramzi Yousef was an Iraqi intelligence agent,” Kate said, watching my eyes as she spoke. “We know it and so does your CIA. They just won’t admit it publicly.”

“Are you trying to tell me the Iraqis were responsible for September 11? That Dick Chaney was right?”

“I don’t know that. Anyway, that’s not the point I’m making now.”

“Then I guess you’re going to have to spell it out for me, Kate. What is your point?”

“Look, Jack, all those big Iraqi operations during the nineties had their roots in Southeast Asia. The reason for that was the Iraqis were developing a deeply eAng a deentrenched, anti-western terrorist network in Asia that would survive no matter what happened anywhere else. They may have succeeded at precious little otherwise, but they succeeded at that.”

“That’s pretty hard for me to believe.”

“Is it? Think about this. Yousef’s operation to hijack the eleven American planes was financed by a Malaysian company called Konsojaya that was fronted by a shareholder list drawn from the highest levels of Malaysian business and government. If Yousef was an Iraqi intelligence officer, then almost certainly Konsojaya was actually a cover for Iraqi intelligence and it was deeply tied into the political and military power structures in Malaysia.”

“Even if that’s true, so what? That was a long time ago.”

“Was it?” Kate asked. “In January 2000, Malaysian intelligence monitored a meeting in Kuala Lumpur between two of the directors of Konsojaya and two of the men who flew the planes into your World Trade Center on September 11 of the following year.”

“Then you are saying the Iraqis were behind the attack on the World Trade Center. That this company in Malaysia had something to do with it.”

“It might well be true, but that’s not what I’m telling you.”

“Then for Christ’s sakes, what are you telling me, Kate?” Now I was the one with the exasperation in my voice. “What had all this cloak-and-dagger Iraqi terrorist stuff got to do with Plato Karsarkis? The Iraqi intelligence service is dead and buried now. Nobody cares anymore even if once upon a time they might have had some connection with the September 11 hijackers.”

“Plato Karsarkis sold smuggled oil for the Iraqis. Sedco, the Panamanian company brokering the sales, sold oil to Konsojaya. Then Konsojaya resold the oil to the Malaysian National Oil Company at a handsome profit and accumulated a lot of cash. Think about that carefully, Jack. Directors of the same company that was buying Iraqi oil from Plato Karsarkis and reselling it at a huge profit were meeting with the terrorists who flew planes into the World Trade Center on September 11. Do you think that was just a coincidence?”

Suddenly it seemed very quiet. I could hear the waters of the gulf scrapping the pilings twenty feet below and I listened to a seagull calling from somewhere very far away.

“What we don’t know,” Kate went on, “is exactly why that oil went through Konsojaya. Karsarkis claims he was working under instructions from the White House, but if he was, why would he have been arranging for a company linked to Iraqi intelligence to accumulate cash in Malaysia?”

“Because his story is bullshit?”

“Maybe, but then it might also be true. We know anti-western terrorists now have significant financial and banking operations in this region, so who knows what was really going on?”

“Perhaps-” I began, but Kate cut me off.

“Along the way Karsarkis could well have acquired an intimate knowledge of at least the financial aspects of terrorist operations in this region, possibly even some indications of what future operation plans may exist.”

Then I saw where this was all going.

“You think those are the people who are after Karsarkis, don’t you?” I said. “Not the marshals. You think someone killed Mike O’Connell because he knew what Karsarkis knows abArkis knoout terrorist operations in Asia, and now these same people are going after Karsarkis himself.”

Kate said nothing. She didn’t have to.

“But what about those email intercepts you gave me?” I asked. “Those weren’t intercepts of some terrorist cell. They were emails originating from the United States marshals and they seemed clear enough to me. Somebody was talking about killing Karsarkis, even if they were being very subtle about it.”

“Yes,” Kate admitted, “I don’t understand that either.”

“So what are you telling me here? That the poor bastard has both a band of Asian terrorists and the US marshals gunning for him at the same time?”

“That could be.”

“Is Karsarkis aware of any of this?” I asked.

Kate gave a little shrug, but she didn’t say anything.

“Does he at least know what the marshals might be up to?”

“I don’t think so,” she said

“I don’t see how he could be. He’d hardly be so keen on going back to Washington if he knew the friendly feds were out to punch his ticket.”

“Maybe they aren’t,” Kate said. “At least not all of them. I think the protection of the United States government is the only chance Plato Karsarkis has to survive. If you don’t take him in, if you can’t find a safe haven for him in the US, he’s lost.”

I started to object to the you thing, but I decided it wasn’t worth the effort and let it go.