“This is all a hell of a mess,” I said after a while.
“Yes,” she agreed. “It is.”
“Even if I was inclined to try and get the White House to pardon Karsarkis, I don’t think I could pull it off. Nobody has that many favors to call in.”
“Plato thinks you do. So do I.”
I let that pass without comment. There was something else I needed to ask Kate about. I didn’t really want to ask, but I knew eventually I was going to have to, so I took a deep breath and just plunged it.
“Do you have any personal reason for caring whether or not Karsarkis gets a pardon?”
I had to know if Kate was acting solely out of conviction or if there was another reason. Karsarkis obviously owned a lot of powerful politicians and other public figures in Thailand and there were many ways to own people. The crude way was to buy them, but there were other subtler ways and even the possibility of webs of personal loyalties that I could never hope to understand.
Kate looked at me for a long time in complete silence. I just looked back. I didn’t bat an eye. I had been in Asia far too long to be ashamed of asking that kind of question.
“First, Jack, please understand this: I have never taken anything from Karsarkis or from anyone else. There are still a few honest people in government here and I’m one of them. Second, I’m not sleeping with Plato now and I’m not going to be in the future. Whether you help Karsarkis or not, I want you to know both of those things are true.”
I nodded. I wanted to believe Kate and I did. I saw no reason not to.
“There is a lot at stake here,” she continued. “Karsarkis may know a great deal about terrorist operations in Asia that threaten all of us. If your people get him back in one piece and he gives them what he has, that would be a good thing for all of us. We need to know what he knows.”
“I guess they could always make it a condition of the pardon that he come clean.”
“You already know they can’t. Under your Constitution a presidential pardon is unconditional. Karsarkis can promise them anything he wants in order to get it, but if he doesn’t deliver, they can’t take it back. His help has got to come from genuine good will. If he promises to tell you what he knows just to get his pardon and then you give him one and he laughs at you and says he’s changed his mind, what are you going to do about it?”
“Have the marshals kill him?” I suggested.
Kate didn’t smile at that. Perhaps she didn’t think it was all that funny.
“Giving Plato Karsarkis a pardon would be difficult for your president politically,” she said. “That’s why Karsarkis needs you. The White House owes you, Jack. You delivered big for them not very long ago. You even made you friend Mr. Redwine quite the hero. He’s the White House counsel. Pardon applications are filed with his office. And he owes you now.”
“You’re assuming an awful lot.”
“I don’t think so.”
I took a dAy'›I tooeep breath and looked away. The thunderclouds were coming closer and I heard the first rumbling in the distance. After a minute or two, my eyes drifted back to Kate.
“If I’m going to represent Karsarkis,” I said, “I need to know everything.”
“All you need to know is what I’ve just told you.”
“That’s not enough.”
“It ought to be. Mike O’Connell probably knew everything and look what happened to him.”
“No, there’s something else,” I said. “Something specific.”
“What is it?”
“Did Karsarkis kill that girl? Did he cut Cynthia Kim’s throat in that hotel room in Washington?”
Kate sat back and folded her arms. “I don’t know,” she said quietly. “I really don’t know. He may have.”
We sat for a while in silence after that, both of us watching the storm build. There was still food on my plate, but I had pretty much lost my appetite.
Kate’s story about Karsarkis’ shadowy connections and his knowledge of terrorist operations in Asia might well have been nothing but a lot of horseshit, something she had concocted to make me feel okay about helping a traitor and a murderer. Still, I had no doubt she really did want me to help Karsarkis get his presidential pardon and the reasons she was giving me for that were no doubt at least partially true.
I took my time about finishing my beer and tried to appear thoughtful, although looking back, I’m not sure why I even bothered. I had known what I would eventually say almost from the moment Kate had started spinning her tales of spies and terrorists and secret money trails leading to Asia. I had always been a complete sucker for stuff like that.
“Look,” I finally told Kate, “let me talk to Karsarkis again. If I’m satisfied he deserves a pardon, maybe I’ll take him on.”
Men are, on the whole, foolish and predictable creatures. I’d had no problem at all looking Karsarkis right in the eye and telling him to shove off when he asked me to get the president to pardon him. Then Kate had asked me to do exactly the same thing and I had gone all goo-goo and said, ‘Oh, sure, whatever you want.’
Kate flashed me one of those smiles Thai women keep in reserve, but she didn’t say another word. She knew she didn’t have to.
Smart woman, I thought to myself. Quitting when she was ahead.
Was I ever going to learn to do that?
Probably not.
THE END
“The greatest trick the Devil ever pulled
was convincing the world he didn’t exist.”
THIRTY SIX
The morning after my lunch with Kate I woke up early. Way too early.
After making some coffee I stood at the window and watched the air glowing purple with a false dawn. When the sun finally appeared at the horizon, it turned the whole world the color of freshly spun b
I hadn’t bothered to call for a reservation. There were flights from Bangkok to Phuket almost every hour and getting a seat was never much of a problem. Sure enough, the nine-o’clock flight had plenty of room and I was in Phuket just after ten. By ten-thirty I was pulling onto the highway for the drive to Patong Beach in a black Jeep Cherokee I had rented from Avis.
When CW and I met at the Paradise Bar-back in a time that now felt at least a century ago although it had really been just a couple of weeks-he told me he was staying at the Holiday Inn. If CW was in Phuket now, and I had no doubt he was, I would bet my last dollar he was still there. Besides, the Holiday Inn was always the first place you looked for Americans in Phuket.
I had barely driven up the hotel’s circular driveway and climbed out of the Cherokee when I heard his voice.
“Goddamn, Slick,” he bellowed. “What the fuck you doing here?”
I followed the sound across the open-air lobby and found CW nursing what looked like a cup of coffee in an
