World of Trouble (9786167611136) Read Online Free PDF

of
whatever it was. He thought about it, but he didn’t tell Charlie
that. Later, looking back, he would always wonder how differently
things might have turned out if he had.
    Charlie stood up and moved to a different
chair, one that put his back to the watching commandos. He swung
his feet up onto the glass and iron table and took off his
sunglasses.
    “Sit down, Jack. There’s something we need to
talk about.”
    Charlie pointed to a chair that would put
Shepherd’s back to the commandos as well and Shepherd walked over
and sat down.
    “Some guys are trying to fuck me,” Charlie
said.
    “Some guys are trying to kill you,” Shepherd
said. “In my book, that’s a lot worse than fucking you.”
    “That’s not what I’m talking about,” Charlie
said, waving away Shepherd’s wisecrack. “I mean those pricks at the
Ministry of Finance in Thailand. They’re trying to grab my
money.”
    “I didn’t know you had any money in
Thailand.”
    “It goes back to before we started working
together. There are some accounts at Bangkok Bank and some more at
SCB. I need for you to sort them out for me.”
    Bangkok Bank was Thailand’s largest bank and
SCB was Siam Commercial Bank, the second or third largest. They
were both good places to have money in Thailand, if you had to have
money in Thailand at all.
    “Sort it out how?” Shepherd asked.
    “Get it out of the country. All of it.”
    “How much are we talking about?”
    “Maybe in all, say, five or six hundred
million.”
    Six hundred million Thai baht was a little
less than twenty million US dollars. Not an insignificant sum, of
course, but less than Shepherd was often called on to handle for
Charlie.
    “Five or six hundred million baht shouldn’t
be any problem,” Shepherd said.
    Then he noticed that Charlie was looking at
him like he had suddenly begun speaking in tongues.
    “Not baht, Jack. I wouldn’t care if it was
just baht. Dollars. US dollars. Five or six hundred million US
dollars.”
    Oh, right, US dollars. Five or six hundred
million US dollars. Of course .
    “I want you to get your ass to Bangkok. I’ll
get everything gathered up in Bangkok Bank for you. I’ve got a
contact there. You talk to him and get everything shifted to Hong
Kong, then you can bury it in some nominee companies.”
    “Look, Charlie, I don’t—”
    “Leave tonight. Those pricks are really
trying to fuck me.”
    “I don’t want to go to Thailand.”
    “I know you don’t.”
    “I told you I wasn’t going back there
again.”
    “I wouldn’t ask you to go if it weren’t
important. You’re the only person I can trust with something like
this.”
    “Look, Charlie, even if I went to Thailand,
I’m not sure how much good I could do you.”
    “You know more about moving money than anyone
I ever met, Jack. You’re a goddamned wizard when it comes to stuff
like that.”
    “I appreciate your confidence, Charlie,
but—”
    “But nothing. When the Asian Bank of Commerce
collapsed, how much was in the wind? Five hundred million? And it
was all CIA black money, wasn’t it?”
    Shepherd said nothing.
    “Your old pals back in Washington were
running around shrieking like a bunch of little girls. Somebody had
fucked them, too.”
    Shepherd said nothing.
    “But you worked out the scam, didn’t you?
Then you tracked down the money all by yourself and you got it
back. And I’ll bet to this day there’re not more than five people
in the whole world who even know it was you who figured the whole
thing out.”
    “Is that the way you think it happened?”
    “That’s the way it did happen.”
    Shepherd shrugged. “A penny saved is a penny
earned.”
    “What the fuck does that mean?”
    “I’m a big fan of clichés. They say so much
and require so little effort.”
    Nothing useful could come of telling Charlie
what really happened to the money from the Asian Bank of Commerce.
A lot of people had died trying to grab that money. Some of them
were good people and some of