Jake Needham - Killing Plato

It was hard to tell where the photograph had been taken, but I did not think it was Bangkok. Anita was standing next to a dark blue Mercedes. She was wearing a short green dress I had never seen before, one which suited her perfectly. She had on yellow pumps and a big yellow belt with a silver buckle. She looked absolutely breathtaking.

There was a man with Anita, of course, but I didn’t know him. He was a few inches taller than she was and I thought they looked to be about the same age. His hair was long and he was dressed in what seemed to be an expensive, well-tailored suit with a white shirt and dark tie. He was unquestionably a handsome man, and he looked poised and confident.

His left arm held Anita around the waist with what was obvious familiarity and her right rested on his b?ack. Her head was bent to his shoulder, her cheek pressed against it.

All of that I could have survived. All of that I could possibly have even one day forgotten. But it was the look on Anita’s face that took everything out of me. Even I could see the grace of love written on her features, the deep familiarity and indisputable devotion to the man at her side. And it broke my fucking heart.

I returned the photograph to the envelope, tucked in the flap, and slid it back across the table to Karsarkis. He left it where it was.

A yellow long-tail boat tracked across the cove below us, scoring it with a line as straight and as white as if it had been drawn with a ruler. Then after a few minutes the boat passed out of sight and the mark faded away and everything was exactly as it had been before. I wondered briefly if I had ever seen the boat at all. Perhaps I had only imagined it.

But I had not imagined the photograph of Anita and her…well, what? I supposed I had to decide what word to use, if only in my most private thoughts. I would be thinking about this a lot, of course, swimming back and forth between hatred and hurt, and thoughts that came without words were hard to get a grip on.

Her lover perhaps? Obviously true, but not an expression I would be able to bring myself to use. Her boyfriend? That sounded juvenile, dismissive, and this was a pain I could not dismiss with ridicule. Her friend? Christ, I couldn’t call him that. That hurt more than calling him her lover. The word would have to wait. It was too soon. Too soon for a word.

I sighed deeply and laced my fingers together behind my neck. Here I was, sitting in the bright sunshine of a beautiful Phuket morning, watching the sea capping gently in a light breeze, sharing coffee with the world’s most wanted fugitive, and trying to absorb the simple fact that my beautiful wife, the woman I had been devoted to beyond measure and loyal to without exception, had found someone else to love.

So drawing on the sum total of the wisdom I had gleaned from well over forty years of living, what was I going to do now? Was I going to wail and beat my breast? Was I going to fling myself off Karsarkis’ cliff and into the sea? Was I going to demand Karsarkis get me a bottle of something and get stinking drunk?

And what would be the point of any of that? I asked myself. What would be the fucking point?

I cleared my throat and shifted in my chair until I was facing Karsarkis again.

“Can we get back to business?” I asked him.

“Yes,” he said, keeping his expression neutral. “If you like.”

Karsarkis watched me carefully, but he didn’t say anything else.

“What is it you know that makes so many people want to kill you?” I asked him after a moment or two.

Karsarkis smiled at that, although I didn’t immediately see anything amusing about my question.

“It’s not so many,” he said. “Not really.”

“Then exactly who is on the list?”

“I would have to guess.”

“Go ahead,” I said. “Guess.”

“I’d rather not.”

“Did you know US marshals have you under surveillance?”

“Of course,” Karsarkis said and he shook his head and chuckled slightly. “I’veuo;I amp;rsq known about the kidnapping plan for a long time. That’s not going to happen.”

“They’re out there right now.” I gestured vaguely toward where I thought the road was. “They’ve got you cut off in both directions.”

“Good Lord, Jack, if I really wanted to go anywhere, you don’t really think a few glorified rent-a-cops driving a couple of panel vans could stop me, do you?”

I thought about Marcus York’s dead black eyes and about the silenced M-16s with laser sights, and I started to tell Karsarkis he probably ought to reconsider that, but I didn’t.

“What would you say if I told you it might have been the marshals who killed Mike O’Connell?”

Karsarkis studied my face, although I could read nothing in his eyes as he did. “Why would you think that?”

“I’ve got friends in Thai intelligence. They gave me a copy of what the NIA claims are intercepts of email between the marshals and somebody in Washington. None of it actually says they have orders to kill you, not in so many words, but that’s what it says nevertheless. I’m not even sure the stuff is genuine, but maybe it is. If it is, if the marshals are willing to kill you because of something you know, then maybe O’Connell also knew and…”

I stopped talking and spread my hands, my conclusion having become self-evident.

Karsarkis made little clicking noises with his tongue, thinking sounds, but he remained expressionless.

“Do you really believe the government of the United States goes around killing its own citizens, Jack?”

“Not very often,” I said. “But, yes, sometimes.”

Karsarkis was watching me carefully. He could see I was thinking about something, but he had to guess what it was.

“You do remember the fee I offered you,” he said, keeping his eyes on mine to see if that was it.

He was wrong. That wasn’t what I was thinking about. But I kept my face still and he didn’t know that.

“Yes, I remember.”

Indeed I did. A million dollars just for taking on the case. Four million more if the president ultimately pardoned Karsarkis. It made me think of a crusty old Jesuit priest who had taught me criminal law at Georgetown and of something he never tired of telling us, something he always called the lawyer’s prayer. ‘Oh, Lord God,’ the catechism went, ‘I pray for only one reward in this life. Send to me one day a very, very rich man, who is in very, very deep shit.’

In nomine Patris, et Filii, et Spiritus Sancti. Amen.

“Why would the White House even consider pardoning you?” I asked Karsarkis.

Karsarkis offered a mirthless laugh. “Gerald Ford pardoned Richard Nixon. Bill Clinton pardoned Marc Rich. How much worse am I?”

“There’s always somebody worse,” I said. “Maybe this time it’s you.”

Karsarkis pulled the box of cigars toward him and flipped up the lid. He studied them for a moment, selected one, and then turned the box and gave it a little push in my direction. I shook my head.

“Was it just about the money?” I asked. “Is that why you sold oil for the Iraqis and laundered the income?”

“Yofy"› amp;ldqu’re not thinking big enough, Jack. It wasn’t ever about selling oil for the Iraqis. And, for me, it wasn’t ever about the money.”

“Then what was it?”

“It was about doing the right thing.”

“The right thing?”

“Hasn’t anyone ever asked you to do the right thing? And then you did it just because it was the right thing, even if you harmed yourself by doing it?”

Karsarkis snipped the end of the cigar and lit it with a long wooden match. He drew gently, rotating it in his hand until the tip was glowing evenly. Then he shook out the match and dropped it into a heavy cut-glass ashtray.