Jake Needham - Killing Plato

Slowly I rolled my head back. The woman had a nice face, but it was not Anita’s face. An Asian face instead. Dark hair, dark eyes, and skin that made me think of looking into a cup of cafe au lait.

At first I couldn’t put a name to the face, although I was sure I knew it. I swam upward through memory, groping for it.

Then I could put a name to it.

Kate.

It was Kate’s face.

“Where am I?” I asked her.

“The hospital,” she said. “You’ve been shot, but you’ll be fine.”

I kept gazing at Kate’s face.

“What are you staring at?” she eventually asked.

“You look so Thai, but you sound…so English.”

Kate laughed and it was a lovely laugh, throaty and warm. “Does that bother you?” she asked.

“No,” I said. “I was only thinking that…well, thank God it’s not the other way around.”

Kate thought about that for a second and then started laughing again, this time sticking her tongue into the corner of her mouth in mock disapproval. “I gather your sense of humor has survived pretty much intact,” she said.

I started to say something smooth and witty, then all at once everything that had happened to me came back. In a single fast-forwarding rush, it all came back.

“How long have I been out?” I asked.

“A little over twelve hours,” Kate said. “We were worried about you there for a while.”

“It was just a scratch on the cheek,” I said.

“Hardly,” Kate said. “You werelign=" shot twice. Once in the left side just below your heart and once in the left arm. The arm was only a flesh wound, but the other shot did some damage. You lost a lot of blood. You might have bled to death if we hadn’t found you when we did.”

I tried to take all that in, but I couldn’t get my arms around it. It didn’t really make any sense to me.

“It was just a scratch,” I repeated doggedly.

“As soon as you came in, they got the bleeding stopped and the bullet out of your abdomen. I know the surgeon. He’s a good man and he says there is no major damage to any organs.”

“I don’t remember anything like that.”

“When you feel like it, I’d very much like to hear what you do remember.”

I took a deep breath, pushed hard against the bottom, and rose all the way up until I broke through the surface.

“Now is okay,” I said.

I thought for a moment and did my best to clear my head. Then I told Kate about the motorcycle pulling in front of us and the other bike coming up from behind. I told her about the Jaguar jerking forward and smashing over the first gunman, and I told her about killing the second shooter with the.45 before I passed out. Something told me not to mention pulling off the man’s helmet and recognizing Marcus York’s face, at least not quite yet, so I left that part out.

“Where did you learn to shoot like that?” Kate asked.

“I used to play tennis with some DEA agents in Washington. They took me to ranges sometimes. Just screwing around. They said I had a knack for it.”

A short silence fell after that. I was pretty badly muddled, but I was lucid enough to probe Kate gently, just to see where it might go.

“Who were those guys anyway?” I asked her.

“We don’t know yet. No ID on either of them, of course. They might have been local hitters, but probably not. More than likely imported. Malaysian, would be my guess.”

“Why would you think that?”

“Well…they looked more Malaysian than Thai to me, but I’m just guessing.”

That stopped me.

“You saw the bodies?” I asked.

“Yes.”

“And they were both Asians?”

“That’s right. So if you’re wondering whether the marshals had anything to do with this, I think the answer is no. I doubt they would have trusted a couple of local hired guns.”

There was no way in hell Kate could have mistaken Marcus York for a Malaysian. If she was telling me the truth, somebody removed York’s body and substituted another one before she got there. On the other hand, maybe Kate was lying to me. Maybe she had seen York’s corpse and she thought I hadn’t, so she didn’t want me to know.

I tried to work out where each of those possibilities left me, but I couldn’t. Before I could even decide whether or not to tell Kate the truth, to tell her I already knew who was behind the attack, she changed the subject

“Is there anybody you’d like me to call for you, Jack? To tell them you’rtace going to be all right?’

“Yes,” I said automatically, “Anita will be worried if she hears…”

But then all that came back to me, too, and I trailed off.

“No,” I said. “No one.”

The finality of it caused me to groan audibly. I turned my head away and Kate leaned closer.

“Shall I get a nurse?’

“No,” I said, “just give me a minute.”

I felt myself plunge into a cavern of coldness and my ears filled with sound that had no source. Kate moved slightly. The gray light in the room shifted and I caught a glimpse of the green luminous numerals of a clock face. My hands trembled against the bedsheets. Then, as abruptly as I had entered it, I was through the cavern and rising again into warmth. My hands stopped trembling and the sound in my ears faded away.

“What about the others?” I asked Kate.

“Dead,” she said. “All of them.”

I had known that already, of course.

“Has anyone told Karsarkis?” I asked. “About Mia, I mean.”

“I sent people out there as soon as we found the wreck. The estate appeared to be secure, but the guards wouldn’t let us in. There’s been no reply to the message we left.”

My eyes searched the room for the clock face I had glimpsed before. I found it on a table.

Just after one o’clock, it said. Was that afternoon? Or night? I struggled to work it out.

Night, I decided. It had to be night. It must be after one a.m.

“What are you doing here?” I asked Kate. “Where did you come from?”

“When Mia didn’t arrive, I called her cell phone and there was no answer. We followed the road back to see if there had been an accident and we found you”

“Didn’t arrive? What do you mean?”

“We were having lunch together at Amanpuri. You didn’t know?”

“She told me she was having lunch with someone. She didn’t say who.”

Kate showed a half smile. “It was me,” she said.

I lay quietly and turned my new discovery over in my mind. It didn’t fit with anything else and I didn’t know how to try to make it fit, so after a while I let it go.

“Who would want to kill Mia?” I asked.

Kate looked at me for a long time.

“What?” I asked.

“Why do you think they were after Mia?”

“Are you trying to tell me it was another mistake? Like Mike O’Connell. Another botched attempt on Karsarkis?”

“That’s possible, I guess. Karsarkis’ car. Mia on one side. A man on the other. Maybe they thought you were Karsarkis.”

“Except I don’t look anything like Karsarkis.”

“Then maybe there’s another explanation, Jack.”

I looked sideways for a moment and then shifted my eyes back to Kate. Her face was professionally empty, but I had no doubt what she meant.

“You amp;rsnd quo;re shitting me,” I said.

Kate shook her head.

“Jesus Christ,” I said. “Why in God’s name would they have been trying to kill me ?”

“If you’re working with Plato, there are people who assume you know what he knows.”

“But I’m not working with Karsarkis.”

“There’re people who probably assume you are.”

“And he hasn’t told me anything.”