above her knees and leave her smooth brown thighs very agreeably displayed. When the white-shirt-and-tie muscle outside closed the door behind me, he shoved me up tightly against the woman, which I had to admit I didn’t really mind at all.
The man, on the other hand, was short and sallow and middle-aged. He wore a dark suit that appeared expensive, although it also looked like it hadn’t been pressed since the day he had bought it. I assumed he had to be an Englishman, mostly because of his bad teeth and worse complexion and the puckered look on his face that suggested a terminal case of constipation.
“Good morning, Mr. Shepherd,” he said without looking directly at me. “Thank you very much for coming.”
His voice sounded familiar, too, but I still couldn’t place him. Regardless, the accent was unquestionably English public school, so I gathered my first impression had been right.
“Well, gee,” I said, not offering to shake hands. “How could I refuse?”
The Englishman said nothing in response, but with my arm still pressed against the woman’s side I thought I felt a little ripple of amusement roll through her body. Then perhaps I was mistaken about that. Around beautiful women all men tend to be irrationally hopeful that they are being regarded as witty and charming. It’s pure genetic programming.
The driver and the guy who was riding shotgun had resumed their places in the front of the car. The Englishman leaned forward slightly and spoke to the driver.
“
The man spoke Thai so colloquially I almost missed what he was saying, but his accent left me wcenkraith little doubt he was completely fluent.
The driver put the car into gear and we rolled slowly around the driveway and out into one of the many small streets that ran through the campus. I assumed the driver would turn right toward busy Phayathai Road, the main artery that bisected the campus north to south, but he didn’t. Instead he turned left, drove behind the National Stadium, and then turned left again on a quiet residential street that led in the general direction of the Chao Phraya River.
Neither the man nor the woman said anything else and I certainly had no intention of giving them the satisfaction of asking what the hell was going on. I concentrated instead on trying to figure out where I knew these two from. I had seen them both recently, I was reasonably sure, but where? And had I seen them together or had I seen them separately?
I was still trying to work that out when the man twisted his body around until he was half facing me and laced his fingers around one knee.
TWENTY SEVEN
“My name is Smith.”
“Really?” I said. “What an unusual name.”
“I could give you a lot of rubbish, but you probably wouldn’t believe it anyway, so let’s just jump right to it. I am with the British Embassy and I work there in an intelligence capacity.”
That stopped me for a moment.
“You’re Tommy’s boss?” I asked the man. “You’re telling me Tommy works for
The woman spoke for the first time. “No, Mr. Shepherd,” she said.
Her voice was so soft I had to bend toward her slightly to hear her words. Her rounded tones and deliberate intonation were an even more obvious if less blatant sign of a childhood spent in English public schools than the man’s overly plummy accent had been.
“I’m Tommy’s boss,” she continued. “I am the Director General of the National Intelligence Agency.”
I examined the woman’s face for some sign she was joking. I saw none.
“I’m speechless,” I finally said.
“Somehow I doubt that.”
The woman smiled slightly when she spoke. I noticed it was a very nice smile, particularly for a spook.
“Okay,” I admitted, “maybe not. But I had no idea the head of the NIA was a woman.”
“Really? And now that you know, why are you so surprised?”
“Well…” I tried to think of a diplomatic way to put it. “On the whole Thailand is something of a man’s world, and generally one thinks of Thai women as-”
“Maids and whores, Mr. Shepherd?”
I glanced at the woman. When I saw she was still smiling, I was greatly relieved.
“Seventy-five percent of the university graduates in Thailand are women,” she continued. “We probably run more major companies and are responsible for more meaningful decisions here than in any nation on earth. My personal belief is that in another decade most Thai men will be driving motorcycle taxis and this will be the world amp;rsquoecisionss foremost matriarchal society.”
“That’s a little difficult to imagine,” I muttered, stalling for time while I tried to figure out where this was going.
“Why?” the woman asked.
“Well, for one thing, almost every government minister and the permanent secretary of every department is a man.”
“That is because government counts for very little in Thailand, Mr. Shepherd, at least when it comes to the exercise of real power. We will continue to let the old dinosaurs preen their egos, line their pockets, and run after schoolgirls for so long as they do nothing else. But then you no doubt already know that is all politicians do here anyway. I’m sure you are just too polite to say it.”
I kept my mouth shut. That was something I didn’t do very often, but this seemed to me to be a good time to test out the concept.
“Look, old boy,” Mr. Smith cut in. “This is all absolutely fascinating, I’m sure, but could we get back to the important point here?”
All at once the penny dropped. I placed both of them.
These two had been at Plato Karsarkis’ dinner party in Phuket. And they had been there together.
“I just realized where we met before,” I said.
“That doesn’t matter,” Smith said. He shook his head and looked away.
“It matters to me.”
“I’m not really concerned with what may or may not matter to you,” Smith continued. “I will say only that the British government does have a certain interest in your friend Plato-”
“Karsarkis isn’t my friend,” I interrupted.
“Whatever you say,” Smith shrugged. “Still, we have an interest in keeping Mr. Karsarkis both alive and reasonably happy, and I’m not so sure your own government shares that interest.”
“What is that supposed to mean?”
“That’s not for me to say,” Smith shrugged again, a gesture he seemed to have practiced a lot. “I’m just along for the ride. This is Kathleeya’s show.”
It was the first time I could recall hearing the woman’s name. Certainly, she hadn’t introduced herself today and I couldn’t remember how she had been introduced to me at Karsarkis’ dinner party either. I wondered if that was her real name. Regardless, Kathleeya-or whatever her name actually was-spoke up before I could ask.
“How much do you really know about Plato Karsarkis?” she asked me.
“Not much. Mostly what they tell me on CNN.”
