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can start with that. If you need anything
else, just ask him and he’ll get it for you.”
    “Is Adnan here?” Shepherd asked.
    “He’s over in the office,” Charlie said,
gesturing vaguely in the direction of the other house across the
compound.
    Adnan was Charlie’s personal assistant. He
was in his forties, slight with slicked-back hair and pale skin,
and he claimed to be Lebanese. Shepherd didn’t think Adnan really was Lebanese, but he had never challenged him on the point.
After Charlie fled Thailand two steps in front of a flood of
corruption charges and settled in Dubai, Adnan had taken on the
vague title of personal assistant. Shepherd didn’t know for certain
what Adnan actually did for Charlie, but what he did know for
certain was that he really didn’t like Adnan. Adnan clearly didn’t
like him either, so Shepherd figured they were square all
around.
    “What’s really going on here, Charlie? I need
to know.”
    “I thought you didn’t do politics, Jack.”
    “Assassination attempts and bribing central
banks isn’t politics.”
    “It is in Thailand.”
    Shepherd said nothing. Charlie did have a
point there.
    “You can’t have it both ways, Jack.” Charlie
leaned forward and rested his forearms on his knees. “Either you’re
part of everything here or you’re a lawyer who just looks after
financial matters for me. We can do this either way, but you need
to decide which way it’s going to be.”
    Shepherd didn’t say anything for a moment. He
just sat and looked at Charlie, and Charlie just sat and looked
back.
    “I don’t do politics,” Shepherd repeated
after a minute or two had passed like that.
    “Fine.” Charlie stood up and rubbed his hands
together. “So you’re my lawyer and you look after financial
matters. Then go to Bangkok and rescue my money. Go right now. You
want to take one of the planes? Use the G-4.”
    “No thanks,” Shepherd said. “I like flying
commercial.”
    Charlie chuckled and shook his head. “You’re
really a piece of work, Jack. Here I put a thirty million dollar
jet at your disposal and you tell me you’d rather drag your ass out
to the airport, stand in the security line, and take a commercial
flight. What the hell am I going to do with you?”
    What was Charlie going to do with him?
It was a question Shepherd had asked himself from time to time,
although he suspected in a somewhat different context. He had never
come up with a particularly satisfactory answer either.
    “So are you going to do this for me, Jack?”
Charlie asked. “There’s no one else I trust.”
    “It’s only money, Charlie.”
    “Yeah, but it’s a lot of money.”
    Shepherd sighed and pulled a small notebook
and a pen out of his pocket.
    “What was the name of that guy at Bangkok
Bank again?”

 
     
     
SEVEN
     
    SHEPHERD WALKED ACROSS to the villa Charlie called
the office and went in through the kitchen door. A large room with
a faux-beamed ceiling that overlooked the sea at the back of the
house had been turned into a conference room, and that was where
Shepherd found Adnan.
    Adnan was leaning over a big oak table that
filled the center of the room examining what looked like a large
map. Shepherd couldn’t see what the map depicted, partly because
the angle was wrong and partly because Robert Darling was standing
at the table next to Adnan blocking his view.
    Shepherd had met Darling a half dozen times.
They were both trustees of Charlie’s charitable foundation and had
run into each other at trustees meetings but not on any other
occasion. Darling had said little about himself other than
something professionally vague about being in the private
investment business. Shepherd hadn’t pressed. He figured it was
none of his business what the man did for a living. He had met a
lot of people who introduced themselves in exactly the same way and
he wouldn’t want to know what most of them did for a
living.
    “I didn’t know you were here, Robert,”
Shepherd