The Assassin on the Bangkok Express Read online

‘Sure.’

  Char retrieved the Glock 17.

  Cavalier examined it.

  ‘Accuracy?’ he asked Char.

  ‘Surprisingly good for a polymer structure.’

  ‘Have you practised with it?’

  ‘I try out all the guns I sell. It’s as accurate as any one of them.’

  ‘From how far?’

  ‘Twenty or thirty metres. If you are good shot, that will do it.’ Char paused before asking: ‘Are you a good shot, Doctor?’

  Cavalier didn’t reply.

  ‘I hope you are discreet, Salesman,’ he said, staring into Char’s eyes.

  ‘These guns are illegal and not registered,’ Char said. ‘I don’t want the police closing me down.’

  ‘Would you have a silencer for this, by any chance?’

  ‘No. What do you need the gun for?’

  ‘Self-defence.’

  ‘With a silencer?’

  Cavalier ignored the question and made an offer for the gun. After some bargaining, he had it and twenty bullets for thirty dollars.

  He rode off and at first had trouble locating Kun’s home in the dark. After about twenty minutes searching, Cavalier traced it as the only place in the area that was lit up. He parked his bike off a track leading to the house. He removed his backpack and took the gun from it, pushing it into his inside jacket pocket. He then camouflaged the bike with shrubs and tree branches.

  Cavalier crept along the path to the house, which was on stilts. An outside staircase led to the living quarters. He could hear men talking loudly about alcohol that friends were bringing. It seemed that Kun and his companions were about to have a party celebrating his thirty-fifth birthday. Cavalier was on edge as he reached a point about thirty metres from the staircase. There seemed little opportunity to confront Kun without having to deal with at least six men, and perhaps others who were expected. Then he heard female voices. He could see a girl dancing on a balcony at the top of the stairs. Another woman joined her. Food was being passed around. Minutes later, he had to rush to cover in shrubs by the track to the house as two motorcycles roared off the main road. Each male driver had a woman perched on the seat behind him and they carried about a dozen bottles of Thai whisky.

  Cavalier thought he had no chance of isolating Kun. He lay where he was, watching the party. Reluctantly, at 10 p.m. he began to make his way stealthily back to his bike. He was halfway to it when he was forced to hide in the scrub again by two more bikers with passengers. They roared past him. Cavalier had resumed his retreat when shots were fired, which cause him to fall flat on the ground. He looked back at the house. Two men with automatic rifles on the first-floor balcony were firing into the air. The birthday celebrations had begun in earnest. A man moved down the staircase and into the yard. Cavalier could see from his hand movements that he was urinating on the front lawn. The man had to dodge spit, which two of the men on the balcony launched at him, bringing much mirth to onlookers. The man finished relieving himself and hurried up the stairs, hurling abuse at the spitters.

  Cavalier hesitated a few minutes before another man ventured into the garden and, wishing to avoid being spat on, moved behind the thick trunk of a plane tree. Kun was leaning over the balcony laughing at his companion. He spat and hit the tree. Cavalier eased along the path closer to the house and hid behind scrub and trees only a few metres from the yard.

  The party continued over the next half-hour with dancing, drinking and more wild automatic-weapon gunfire. A fight broke out between Kun and another man. Kun hit him hard. His opponent rocked backwards down the stairs. Others applauded as two women rushed down to attend to the unconscious man. Kun walked down, kicked the stricken man and wandered into the garden. He stopped near the plane tree about four metres from Cavalier. Two men on the balcony began spraying bullets that whistled above Kun’s head. He stopped fumbling with his fly and waved a fist at the gunmen.

  ‘Hey! That was close! Stop that or I’ll come and smash you!’ he yelled.

  The firing stopped. Cavalier crawled in the shadows to the plane tree, gun in hand. His heart was pounding. Kun began urinating. The two men on the balcony took the moment to fire above Kun’s head. Cavalier jumped to his feet and aimed at Kun from three metres. He fired two shots which were drowned out by the sporadic spray of the automatic weapons. Kun fell to his knees and then toppled over, his face in a puddle of his own making.

  Cavalier kept in the shadows and hurried away from the house. The laughing and gunfire continued. He reached his motorcycle and hauled on his backpack. The partygoers were scurrying down the stairs. Cavalier started the bike and kicked away, gunning the machine as fast as he dared along the road. He heard other bikes at the house starting up. They were giving chase. Cavalier’s bike was smaller, and as fast as he pushed it, the other bikes were soon gaining ground.

  He raced through the checkpoint before a barrier was lowered. He ignored border guards who shouted for him to stop, then blocked the following bikes at the barrier. The security guards insisted on examining the riders’ identity documents. It gave Cavalier just enough distance from them as he reached the bus terminal and hid the bike behind a closed market. The last night bus back to Chiang Mai was just starting up and the passengers were climbing on board.

  He scurried through trees to the small airfield. A Cessna was standing near the wooden hangar and terminal. Cavalier could see the bus pulling out, just as the two chasing bikers reached the area.

  Cavalier jumped in the cockpit. Flight plan papers were sitting on the seat. He started the engine, revved it briefly, taxied to the makeshift, part-dirt runway and took off. On the ascent, he could see the bus stopped on the road. Kun’s companions were gesticulating with the driver, who would not let them on the bus.

  Cavalier headed due north at a 10,000-feet altitude that would allow him to easily clear the mountains, which could be seen in the moonlight. There were no other planes flying as low and he was able to relax on what became an enjoyable flight. Cavalier began radio contact with Chiang Mai airport after two hours and was given instructions for his approach. He landed at 4 a.m. and killed time playing pool at an all-night go-go bar on the Chiang Mai Land Road. At 6 a.m. he was ravenous after his sleepless night of exertions. He ate some pork fried rice from a street vendor.

  At 7 a.m., about the time he would arrive if he’d come by bus, he reached his flat. He rang Pin at the hospital, but she was in the emergency operating room. She would phone him when she could. Cavalier decided to get some much-needed sleep. He was woken mid-afternoon by a call from Pin.

  ‘I can’t believe what I’ve been told!’ she said in a strange voice. ‘Kun was at a party last night and was either in a fight or was shot by accident. He’s dead.’

  ‘Dead! Are you sure?’

  ‘Certain. The police came around to question my mother. She has Far. She went to the school in the hope of seeing her, but Kun and his mad mates were not there.’

  ‘You said he was shot …’

  ‘In the chest and head, the police told me. Apparently, his mates were skylarking about and firing their weapons!’ Pin’s voice was excited. ‘They haven’t charged anyone yet. It may be judged as an “accidental homicide”.’

  ‘Far is okay?’

  ‘Fine. She’s with my mother. They will take a bus that will arrive here arrive here this afternoon.’

  ‘That’s wonderful!’

  ‘I told you Serena would bring me good luck. It’s amazing!’

  ‘Oh, yes the ghost doll.’

  ‘No, she is my angel child.’

  ‘Hmm. Have you done anything about medication?’

  ‘Not had time.’ Pin paused and asked, ‘You think I’m mad and this love for Serena is part of it?’

  ‘No, I can separate the two. I still want you to see a specialist. You may find that you’re a better doctor for it.’

  ‘I know as much as anyone about the side effects of drugs prescribed for my condition,’ she said. ‘They can retard you.�
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  ‘Let’s talk about it tonight after you’re reunited with Far.’

  ‘I suppose you don’t wish to be with me now.’

  ‘I want to be with you. I believe you have to do something about your mood swings.’

  After a long silence, Pin said, ‘I’ll see a specialist tomorrow.’

  *

  That day Cavalier put the Glock 17 gun and the eighteen remaining bullets in a padded bag and placed it in a bank deposit box.

  *

  A local coroner’s report, six months after the turbulent events in Mae Sot, caused Pin to quiz Cavalier about how he had exited Mae Sot on the night of the killing. The report suggested the bullets that struck her former husband were not those from the weapons of his friends firing drunkenly into the darkness. There was also the evidence from two of them that they had given chase after an ‘unknown assailant’. The police view was that one of Kun’s friends had used a handgun, not an automatic weapon like the others, and had accidentally hit him with two shots. The police claimed that the gun had then been either hidden or destroyed. The coroner accepted their evidence and recorded ‘death by misadventure’.

  ‘You went to the bus terminal on my mother’s motorcycle,’ Pin said one morning over breakfast at his flat, ‘but did you take the bus or not?’

  ‘Of course, why?’

  ‘My phone recorded you calling me at 7 a.m.’

  ‘After the bus arrived in Chiang Mai, yes.’

  Pin paused and eyeballed him.

  ‘Why did you tell my mother to meet Far at the preschool, knowing that Kun would pick her up?’ she asked.

  ‘Your mother told me that he didn’t always turn up. He neglected her. She said the teachers sometimes were forced to take Far to their homes to look after her.’

  ‘But Kun could have attacked my mother.’

  ‘I don’t think so. The police came to her home the night before. They said they were going to talk to him …’

  ‘They had already spoken to him,’ Pin interrupted.

  ‘No, they were going to speak to him. Your mother was hostile about them not doing something about him.’

  Pin pulled an expression indicating she was unconvinced. She rested her hands on her baby bump and probed further.

  ‘You told my mother than you thought Kun would be with the police,’ she said.

  ‘Yes, they said they would interrogate him.’

  ‘My mother said you took her bike in the evening at about 8 p.m. She couldn’t remember the time exactly. The bus didn’t leave until closer to midnight.’

  ‘About 11 a.m.’

  ‘That is a gap of about three hours.’

  ‘I went for a long ride on the bike. I do that to clear my mind.’

  ‘Kun’s mates said that the man they chased after Kun was shot was not on the bus.’

  Cavalier shrugged. ‘Okay, but I was on the bus.’

  ‘Hmm,’ Pin mused, while keeping her eyes on Cavalier.

  ‘I was right about Kun,’ he said.

  ‘What?’

  ‘He was with the police the next day.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘He was in a makeshift morgue at their station. It was in the coroner’s report, remember?’

  The comment startled and confused her. Before she could reflect on the remark, she had one more query: ‘I bumped into Char when I was seeing my family last week.’

  ‘Char …?’

  ‘You know, the guy who sold me the gun.’

  ‘Oh, yeah.’

  ‘He was so excited about Kun’s murder.’

  ‘Killing. The coroner judged it was death by misadventure.’

  ‘Ok, whatever. Char has taken a step up in the Mae Sot underworld because my ex was eliminated as a rival. He is very happy.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘He was most deferential in his remarks about you. He asked about you in an odd way. Said he hoped to see my “doctor friend” again.’

  ‘That is strange.’

  ‘He wanted to offer you a share in a bottled-water business,’ she said, watching his reaction closely, ‘on very good terms indeed. Are you interested?’

  ‘No. I have a golden rule. Use contacts in the criminal and espionage world for information, but never do business with them.’

  Although not entirely convinced by Cavalier’s plausible responses, she relaxed her expression and poured them both coffees. She looked at her watch.

  ‘Damn! I’ll be late for work.’

  ‘Aren’t you relieved that Kun has gone?’

  ‘Yes …’

  ‘That is what you and your mother were plotting, right?’

  ‘Yes, that is true.’

  ‘Then providence or the Buddha or both conspired for you.’

  ‘And Serena,’ Pin said, kissing him and reaching for her bike keys. ‘I asked for her help too. She had more influence than anything.’

  *

  Over the decades, Pin’s mind turned to the questions about that fateful night whenever Cavalier left on ‘assignments’, allegedly for his newspaper, and would not discuss them in any detail. It gave her pause over what he really did on his missions, and what he may have been involved in at Mae Sot when Kun was shot. Char’s continued deferential references to Cavalier whenever Pin bumped into him also raised her suspicions. Yet she never mentioned the killing with either man, preferring to accept her good fortune, or Cavalier’s extreme measure in his protection of her and her family.

  PART TWO

  2016

  7

  A NEW IDENTITY

  Cavalier met his good friend from the Australian Federal Police, Tommy ‘Wombat’ Gregory, at Melbourne’s Lindrum Hotel and challenged him to a game of pool. They were both exceptional players. In the best of three, they were one-all and it was down to the last few shots of game three to decide the winner. Gregory had only to slot the black to win. Cavalier still had three balls to put away. It was his shot.

  ‘I need to put two away at least with this,’ he said, indicating two pockets at one end of the table.

  ‘I’ve seen you do that once before,’ Gregory said. ‘It’s not the equivalent to a hole in one in golf, but close. Two hundred says you won’t do it again.’

  ‘You’re on. Don Bradman did it four times in six games when I played him at his home.’

  ‘You’re not the Don, Vic.’

  ‘Granted.’

  ‘Did you beat him?’

  ‘No. I lost six-oh,’ Cavalier said, lining up the shot, ‘got close in two games. He had the best eye I’ve ever come across in any sport.’

  ‘That was his secret, wasn’t it?’

  ‘Yes, coupled with his powers of concentration. Never met a competitor so focused. He was in his late eighties and I was forty years younger when we played.’

  ‘He would have made a wonderful assassin.’

  ‘Without doubt,’ Cavalier said with a laugh. ‘Now you’re trying to put me off.’

  The shot needed an exceptional ricochet off the target balls close to each other and at forty-five degrees to the pockets. He took two minutes to size up the angles, then played the shot. Both balls slid into the intended pockets but to the surprise of both, Cavalier’s third ball was also hit. It trickled into a pocket at the other end of the table.

  ‘Mate! I have never seen a shot like that! A triple!’

  ‘I can assure you that the third strike was a fluke.’ Cavalier pocketed the black to win the best of three.

  ‘The Don would never have made that shot,’ Gregory said, shaking his head in disbelief.

  ‘I wouldn’t bet on it.’

  They took the elevator to Gregory’s suite, which he used as on office when away from his home town of Mandurah in Western Australia.

  Cavalier had been lying low in the eight months since returning from Vietnam, Cambodia and Thailand after he had assassinated Leonardo Mendez, the head of one of the world’s biggest drug cartels. Cavalier had been given a video that convinced him that Mend
ez had murdered Cavalier’s and Pin’s daughter Pon by guillotining her. It was the grotesque recreational habit of the drug boss and his henchmen. Pon had been trying her hand at freelance journalism and had been captured by the cartel in Mexico.

  Cavalier had tracked Mendez in Thailand, eventually isolating and killing him at the notorious Nana Plaza in Bangkok’s red-light district. He had escaped Thailand by flying to Phnom Penh, and then taking a boat down the Mekong River to Vietnam. Cavalier had been pursued by Mendez’s top hitman, Jose Cortez, who wanted revenge for Mendez’s assassination. Cortez backed off, however, when Cavalier warned him by phone that if he and his two henchmen dared pursue him into the Mekong Delta hinterland, Cavalier would easily pick them off in the jungle.

  Once in the suite, Gregory made him a coffee and told him: ‘You’ll have to disappear. Jose Cortez has put a contract out on you. If he doesn’t do it himself, he’ll hire someone in Australia. We believe it’s worth more than a million.’

  ‘Perhaps you should take it up,’ Cavalier said with a grin.

  ‘Vic, this is serious.’

  ‘Who is the source?’

  ‘Our American cousins. Their contacts within the cartel are most reliable. Since the demise of his boss and very close friend Leonardo Mendez, Cortez has become convinced you murdered him. It’s not just business; it’s personal too.’

  ‘What does that mean? Cortez is the most effective contract killer in the world. Eighty kills. It doesn’t compute. There must be something else.’

  Gregory shrugged. ‘Whatever it is, he is coming after you.’

  ‘I expected it.’

  ‘Does it scare you?’

  ‘Makes me alert. I am used to death threats. It helps that you have forewarned me; thank you.’

  ‘I know better than most how well you can handle yourself. But here you won’t know where the killer will come from. They’ll be able to track you easily. It would be advisable for you to “depart”. Do what you do better than anyone else: become someone else and stay blended in.’ Gregory paused and added, ‘Please do it, Vic.’

  ‘Where would you suggest I go?’

  ‘Wherever you feel comfortable; I’d suggest you leave Australia.’