Laundry Man

Captain Tom looked at me strangely. “Is that a joke, too?”

“No. Why should it be?”

“That was how we found him so fast. I thought you knew.”

“Knew what?”

“That he flew down from Bangkok on a Thai Airways flight three days ago.”

“Why would I know that?”

“His ticket,” Captain Tom smiled. “It was in the name J. Shepherd.”

I chuckled and nodded as if I was appropriately amused.

What in God’s name was that crazy bastard up to? He was just daring me-or somebody-to come and get him.

The highway was largely deserted except for swarms of motorcycles and an occasional pickup truck. Off to our right I caught glimpses of the ocean through thick stands of rubber trees. Over the noise of the jeep I could hear the surf slapping against the rocky cliffs. The road suddenly dipped and then emerged from the trees and we were barreling along next to a crescent-shaped beach that was deserted except for a small frame building near the surf line that I took to be a restaurant. Just past the building, whatever it was, Captain Tom swung the jeep off the road and headed inland, bumping straight across a rocky, gently rising field as if he had driven it many times before.

We bounced in and out of rolls of black rock terraced like layers of icing on a birthday cake. Avoiding the worst of the gaps between the terraces, Tom guided the jeep at an angle across the rising ground until we had climbed a few hundred yards from where we had left the highway. When we reached a gap between two hillocks, he swung the jeep around until it was pointed right through them and then he stopped. From there we had an unobstructed view down the coast.

Pushing his seat back, Captain Tom stood up and rested his forearms on the top of the jeep’s windshield. With his forefinger he pointed off in the distance and I stood up next to him and shaded my eyes with the palm of my right hand. I followed the line of surf and rock south until it turned east, twisting back on itself and disappearing from view, but I saw nothing out of the ordinary.

“What am I supposed to be looking for?”

“See that house?” Captain Tom pointed again. “Right there on the end of the point?”

All I saw was a lot of rock.

“Try using the glasses,” Tom prompted.

I sat down and pulled the field glasses out of my bag, then stood up again.

“Look just where the coast seems to end right in the middle of that last gap,” Tom said.

I lifted the binoculars and slowly scanned the area to which Captain Tom was pointing, but I still couldn’t find a house.

“I see something that looks like a big wall.”

“That’s it. That’s all you can see from here. The wall goes all the way around the compound. There are several buildings in there, a main house and a couple of smaller ones. You’ve got to get above it to see down inside. Some people around here call it the Berghof.”

I lowered the field glasses and slowly tilted my heard toward Tom.

“What did you say?” I asked.

“Some people here call that house the Berghof,” Tom repeated. “It’s the name of a place in Germany where Hitler used to-”

“I know what the Berghof was,” I interrupted.

It was also the password Dollar had used to encrypt his files. What in the world did that mean?

I lifted the glasses again and swept them back and forth over the area, but there really wasn’t all that much to see. The wall was built of black lava rock that had been smoothly mortared together into a grim-looking barrier at least fifteen feet high. It appeared strong enough to stop tanks.

“Do you know who owns the house?” I asked.

Tom shook his head. “There’s been a lot of talk, but I don’t think anybody really knows.”

He thought for a moment longer.

“Somebody once told me it was owned through some chain of paper companies in different countries. That kind of thing.”

“Could you find out what the companies are?”

“Probably. Why, does it matter?”

“Maybe it doesn’t, but I’d like to know.”

I had noticed a pad and a pencil in the jeep’s storage box, so I sat down, pulled it out, and wrote down the number of my cell phone. I ripped the sheet off and handed it to Tom.

“Call me when you find out.”

“Certainement.”

We slid back into our seats and Tom turned the jeep downhill. Within a few minutes we were back on the hard surface, traveling south at a good clip. Several miles passed before either of us spoke again.

“How did you end up here, Professeur?” Captain Tom eventually asked. “If I’m not being too personal.”

“You mean in Phuket? Today?”

“No, I mean in Thailand. It’s none of my business, I know, but you don’t seem the usual type.”

Captain Tom glanced over at me, then tossed out a real classic of a shrug, contorting his whole body into a dismissive gesture. “Ca ne fait rien. I was just making conversation.”

I always told people I had taken the teaching job at Sasin so that I could live the quiet life, but if that was true what was I doing in Phuket riding in a drug syndicate’s jeep with a loaded.45 at my feet chasing after a guy who had bought a Philippine bank for the Russian mob and used it to launder money to bribe Chinese politicians? Nobody had asked me to do it. As a matter of fact, the closer I got to Barry, the more people demanded that I not do it. So how could I answer Tom’s question? What in the world was I doing here?

“I don’t know, Tom,” I finally said. “I really don’t know anymore.”

Captain Tom nodded slowly as if he had been expecting me to say exactly that.

“Well, anyway,” I added for no particular reason, “I am here.”

“No, you’re not.” Captain Tom waggled his forefinger at me and grinned. “Ike wasn’t here. You’re not here. Shit, I’m probably not here either, Professeur.”

The jeep suddenly hit another hole in the road and Tom fought the steering to keep control as one front tire skidded down into the hole and back out again.

“But sure as Christ that motherfucking hole is here all right.”

Tom started to laugh and as his voice rose and fell I joined in, too. It felt damn good.

FORTY TWO

Tom stopped the jeep at the bottom of the long narrow driveway that sloped steeply upward to where the Phuket Yacht Club commanded a flamboyant view over the deep cove that sheltered Nai Harn Beach. Its white, futuristic-looking rooms were cantilevered into stacks across the cliff face and they glistened dazzlingly in the Phuket sun.

In spite of its name, the Phuket Yacht Club isn’t a yacht club, nor for that matter is it any other kind of club either. It is instead a lavish hotel whose doors opened readily to anyone with sufficient cash or the right kind of plastic.

“You’d be a little conspicuous if I drove you all the way up to the front door,” Tom said.

Oh, right. And just strolling into the kind of world-famous resort where you might stumble over Madonna shacked up with Prince Charles won’t make me conspicuous at all.

Tom got out of the jeep and flipped me the keys. I caught them in the air. Then he held out his hand and we