Killing Plato

Jake Needham Killing Plato

“The only player who wins

is the one who owns the game.”

— Meyer Lansky, mobster

ONE

It started the way a spy story should start.

On a misty night in Phuket.

In a little bar.

I recognized him the moment I walked in. He was standing by himself holding a tiny stainless steel telephone to his ear. His body was turned slightly away from me, his elbows resting on the polished teakwood of the bar top, and he was gazing out toward the ocean, nodding his head occasionally, listening more than he was talking.

Plato Karsarkis could not be here of all places, casually leaning on a bar in Phuket, a resort island off the eastern coast of Thailand. There was plainly no way in the world that could be.

Yet, just as plainly, there he was.

Anita and I had spent the day exploring. A warm drizzle began to fall late in the afternoon and we decided to call it a day and have an early dinner at a place called the Boathouse that is right on the sand at Kata Beach. I parked the jeep and Anita stopped at the ladies room while I went in to get us a table. The girl at the hostess stand said she would have one free in fifteen or twenty minutes, so I left my name and went into the bar to wait.

The bar was laid out in the shape of a large C. Plato Karsarkis was leaning on the side nearest the ocean and so I took a stool on the opposite side that offered both a striking panorama of the Andaman Sea and the opportunity to stare at Karsarkis without being too obvious about it. I ordered a Heineken and wondered what Anita’s face would look like when she came out of the ladies’ room and saw him.

Anita had designated this trip to Phuket as our official honeymoon and she had been obsessive about making every detail of it perfect. We were both well into our forties-I somewhat more so than she-and we had been living together for almost two years before we got married so I really couldn’t understand why she was making such a big deal out of having a honeymoon now. Still, Anita had her own ways, and I had absolutely no intention of risking a quarrel by volunteering my thoughts on the subject.

Anita was an artist, a painter whom European art circles had clasped to their bosom as a harbinger of what the critics were calling a new wave of post-feminist revisionism, whatever that meant. Even when her behavior didn’t make complete sense to me, I always tried to remember Anita had an ability to see the world in ways that I could not, ways that were continually surprising and frequently illuminating.

I shifted my weight on the stool to cover the turn of my body and glanced back toward Karsarkis.

He seemed taller in person than he had on television, although I had always heard it was supposed to be the other way around. His forehead was quite high, his nose rounded in that way that some people call Roman, and his curly gray hair trimmed closely against his skull. He wore a tight black T-shirt tucked into black chinos cinched with a narrow belt, also black, and although he must have been in his fifties, maybe even older, he looked pretty able- bodied. The whole effect was something like a cross between Giorgio Armani and Richard Nixon.

What he did not look like, leaning nonchalantly there on the bar and talking into his shiny Eulittle telephone, was the world’s most famous fugitive. Which was funny, because that was exactly what he was.

“That was a Heineken,” the bartender said, breaking into my reverie. “Right?”

I pulled my eyes away from Karsarkis. “Right,” I said.

The bartender placed a tall glass still frosty from the cooler on a blue and white striped square of cotton and poured my beer from the familiar green bottle. When he was done, he rapped the empty bottle smartly on the bar top, nodded, and walked away.

As soon as he did, my eyes flicked right back to Plato Karsarkis.

Karsarkis had put away his mobile phone and now he was just leaning against the bar on his forearms, doing nothing in particular. Oddly, it almost seemed as if he was looking at me. So unlikely was that it took several seconds for me to register that he really was looking at me. Worse, when Karsarkis saw the realization of it in my eyes, he raised his right index finger and shook it at me in an exaggerated gesture of mock irritation.

I flashed a hasty and very self-conscious smile and, thoroughly embarrassed, looked down at the bar. I was reaching for my glass again just to have something to do when Karsarkis called out to me.

“Are you Jack Shepherd?”

My first thought of course was that I had misunderstood him. Plato Karsarkis could not have been speaking to me or have the slightest idea who I was. So I kept my eyes forward and said nothing.

“Pardon me,” Karsarkis called out again. “You’re Jack Shepherd, aren’t you?”

Christ, I had heard him right. Karsarkis was speaking to me, and he did know who I was. With what I’m certain was a look of utter bafflement, I lifted my eyes back to Karsarkis. He shook his finger at me again, and then he stood up and started around the bar.

Holy shit.

The world’s most famous fugitive was not only alive and well and having a drink at the Boathouse in Phuket, he was walking straight toward me, his hand thrust out to shake mine.

TWO

I took Karsarkis’ hand. What else was I going to do? We shook.

“I’m Plato Karsarkis.”

“I know.”

Karsarkis nodded quickly and lowered his eyes. The man’s brief acknowledgement of his notoriety seemed to me to contain an element of genuine embarrassment and, for a moment, I almost felt sorry for him.

“May I?” Karsarkis pointed to the stool to my right, the one at the end of the bar right up against the wall.

“Of course.”

He pulled the stool out and sat down, pushing himself around until his back was to the wall and his face turned toward mine. The bartender had returned when he saw Karsarkis reach for the stool and stood waiting quietly.

“Campari and soda,” Karsarkis said without looking at him. “And Mr. Shepherd will have another…”

His eyebrows lifted into a question.

“No thanks,” I said. “I’m fine.”

Karsarkis nodded slightly at that, but made no comment. After a moment his eyes slid off mine and we sat there together in what was i›something.

“It’s so beautiful here,” Karsarkis said very softly. “I could stay in this place forever.”

I didn’t know exactly what I had been expecting Karsarkis to say, but it certainly wasn’t that.