The Assassin on the Bangkok Express Read online

  Cavalier entered the building, nodded to the security guard and took one of the three inside elevators to his apartment. He kept the lights off and rummaged in a drawer for one of the two pairs of glasses that Gregory had given him. Cavalier tried them on and made adjustments. He eased onto a balcony and zeroed in on the bank opposite. He was amazed to be able to discern rodents, squirrels and even a snake when they moved. It was overwhelming at first. The bank of grass in front of buildings and pagodas seemed alive with squirming, writhing life and it took him several minutes to achieve a more discerning view. He was distracted by a car pulling up the other side of the Meng Rai Bridge, at the intersection where Pin had her accident.

  He adjusted the glasses again. Two men emerged on the road behind buildings and then disappeared. Cavalier waited, scouring the area. He noted two figures moving into one of the open pagodas. They both had binoculars, and were looking into the Rajavej Hospital, Holiday Inn and the Riverside Condo.

  Cavalier bent low and moved back inside the apartment. Using the glasses, he could still see them through windows. They did not appear to have weapons, at least not long-range rifles that could target him. He took his valise with the handgun and decided to confront these two pursuers. Cavalier hurried down the street to the 7-Eleven and drove his bike at speed over the Meng Rai Bridge. The Mazda sped off seconds before he arrived and he tailed it. He manoeuvred close enough to get glimpses of the men. He guessed they were Smith’s men, and they certainly looked the part: Caucasian and in suits, which were rarely seen in Chiang Mai, especially in late March when the weather turned very hot. He had eliminated in his mind the other two outside possibilities from his encounters in the city on this trip. If the Mexicans were somehow onto him, they would not bother with the niceties of casing his apartment building, and they would be carrying weapons. If the two possible Indonesian terrorists had managed to learn his identity—which seemed an impossibility—they too would not concern themselves with surveillance.

  At the lights leading to the main thoroughfare, the Chang Klan Road, he pulled up next to the car, and lifted the visor on his helmet. The two Caucasians in the vehicle were startled. Cavalier signalled for them to wind down the passenger window. They refused and drove on, trying to lose him, but he stayed right on their tail until they were stopped again at lights near the Chiang Mai night market. They lowered the passenger-side window.

  ‘What do you want, Pal?’ one of them said, his accent American.

  ‘Tell Melody Smith to use professionals to tail me,’ Cavalier said.

  He then wheeled off in the direction he had come. Looking back in his mirror he could see the Mazda disappearing in the other direction. Cavalier was disturbed by this spying on him, but on reflection believed he understood the reason Smith would be creating a file on him for any number of reasons, not the least being that she would want something to have over him just in case he was ever to disclose anything of the discussion they’d had. Jacinta was ex-CIA, and he had dealt with them, indirectly and on two occasions directly, over thirty-five years. Cavalier knew the narrow and broad sweep of the agency’s mentality. He now regretted having agreed to meet Smith. It manifested a sense of siege in him.

  13

  THE BEQUEATHING

  Cavalier didn’t see Ted for three days running. The wheel-chair had not been moved in that time. He made enquiries at the condo reception and was saddened to discover that Ted had died. The next day Cavalier found a brown box outside his apartment door, marked to his attention. He emptied the contents on a table, including ten thousand American dollars cash, another hundred thousand cash in Thai baht, Ted’s two passports and other older ones, bank account booklets and other personal items. There was also a note from Ted.

  Dear Laurent,

  I am writing this before I am unable to write anymore.

  You now have my personal effects. Whatever you find in the box is yours. I have notified my Thai lawyers of this.

  As the sandwich board says, ‘the end is nigh’—for me at least.

  I have few regrets. I have been seeing out time since my beloved Rana died this time last year. I have never been one for much sentimentality.

  I bored you with my travel stories but you can see from my passports that the locations were right. You’ll notice too that my real name was not Ted Baines but Edward Blenkiron. So, in an odd way the real name will live on, while “Ted Baines” will leave this mortal coil. I told you the reason I took another ID. I was ashamed but your comments helped me transcend the guilt, at just the right time before I meet my maker, if there is one. You also helped me overcome worrying about what my action will mean to my reincarnation. Although a Buddhist, I’ve had my doubts about reincarnation. If it’s real, I’ll be sent back as a rat, maybe? I’d like to be a black cat, if I have a choice!

  My Thai lawyers will be in touch over my meagre Estate. Spend it wisely Laurent, because there is not much of it!

  I wish to thank you for enriching my last few months with your intelligence, friendship, kindness and humour.

  I believe the Thais have gotten it right about Karma.

  Have a good life,

  Ted.

  Cavalier found the American a warm, sagacious figure. The sadness was compounded by the sight of Ted’s wheelchair, which he saw every day when he used the outside elevator that overlooked the condo’s bike parking area, or when he jumped on the Harley standing next to it.

  There was a poignant reminder in the chair’s emptiness.

  *

  A week later, the two English-speaking Thai papers had stories about a gangland-style shoot-out in Bangkok’s Klong Toey slum. At first, Cavalier thought nothing of it, but the newspaper and Internet coverage made him curious. It emerged that Americans were part of the incident; then Mexicans were said to be involved. Next, a major story broke that the Mexican singer Talia Cruz had been a victim in the shoot-out, taking a bullet in one of her long legs, which fortunately were well insured. She was under care in a Bangkok hospital. The actor Tyrone Risk had received a superficial bullet wound to an arm.

  That was more than Cavalier needed to know. The stories grew and it was soon disclosed that Cruz and Risk had made contact with Jose Cortez. He had given Risk an interview and later dined with the ‘stunning, quixotic’ Cruz, as one paper described her. Unattributed net items speculated that these two showbiz people had been part of a DEA/CIA sting to snare Cortez.

  Fascinated, Cavalier contacted Gregory by text to obtain more details. Gregory replied:

  We understand it was a botched scam.

  Any casualties?

  No details but DEA lost two agents, CIA one.

  Not the lovely MS, I hope.

  No, she is okay. In fact, she is back in a bigger saddle.

  Meaning?

  The CIA ran the show. Because it failed, she and the DEA have taken charge of nabbing JC. I hear you knocked her back, correct?

  How could anyone refuse her?

  Seriously, Vic, she will be coming after you with an offer you can’t refuse.

  I’ve had them before. In any case, I’m retired.

  This episode should please you on one level. All the key people—the thugs—from the cartel are certainly now all out of Chiang Mai. Still wise you stay incognito until the cousins can clean up the cartel mess.

  Mess-up!

  Yeah, but at least they’re working on it. When and if they nab Cortez, you can consider coming home.

  *

  Cavalier arranged Ted’s funeral in line with Buddhist traditions, on the seventh day after the death, at Wat Umong, a seven-hundred-year-old monastery located against the mountains of Doi Suthep, about a kilometre south of the main campus of Chiang Mai University. After the cremation, Cavalier watched monks chanting, wondering if he would be expected to join in the ritual of placing the small porcelain urn in the temple’s beautiful gardens. A whiff of incense drifted through the building as Cavalier waited.

  When it became apparent that he would no
t be needed, he joined the handful of people from the Riverside Condo, who filtered out of the temple. He decided to walk the grounds where monks were on benches reading, in clearings meditating, or feeding deer who roamed the gardens.

  Cavalier felt a real peace in a moment of solace for the first time on the trip. He reflected on a friendship cut all too short and then attempted meditation, which he’d promised himself to re-engage with on this stay but had so far failed to do. He had been taught a twenty-minute version of basic transcendentalism by the mother of a former Indian woman friend. He realised his mind was in a state of flux and he couldn’t keep certain thoughts from intruding. Ted, and his admission about having killed a man, was one. Cavalier reproached himself for not being more of a help by soothing the American’s mind about this deed of so long ago. Maybe, perhaps he could have helped his will to live, and to enjoy life without the nagging, slow-burning guilt that Ted had admitted at times consumed him with grief and regret. But Cavalier had held back from speaking to him further. It brought up his own killing experiences that did not bother him, but which he’d rather not dwell on. Thoughts too of Pon encroached. He imagined her lying in some shallow Mexican grave with a thousand other victims of the drug cartel’s inhumane activity, similar perhaps to the ones she had videoed herself in her proud declaration to him that she would become, like him, an investigative journalist. A third invasion of his meditative state were thoughts of Irina and Doug, the two possible Indonesian terrorists he’d spied on.

  After a failed attempt to concentrate, he fell asleep.

  14

  RESURRECTION

  By instinct or otherwise, Cavalier awoke and glanced at his watch. He had been asleep in the shade of a plane tree for two hours. He looked up and noticed a tall woman, her head covered in a green scarf and wearing large dark glasses, walking his way. Cavalier waited. She had to be coming to him; there was no other person within forty metres. He recognised the woman’s lithe, sensual movement, yet could not place her. He reached for his valise, slid a zip to open it and reached in to grip the Glock 17. Its normally cold plastic handle was warm.

  It wasn’t until she was fifteen metres away that he recognised Jacinta Cin Lai, the former agent for the Thai Special Investigative Unit (SIU) with whom he had a loose, unwritten and unsaid alliance in his pursuit of Mendez. He eased the weapon from the valise and held it so she could see it. She stopped where she was, and slowly removed her glasses.

  ‘I’ve come to help you,’ she said. He scoured the area, his keen eyes searching for hidden accomplices. ‘Don’t you trust me?’

  ‘I can’t afford to trust anyone.’

  Cavalier was mindful that last year she had been assigned by her former boss, Police Chief Aind Azelaporn, to protect Mendez, who over time she realised was Cavalier’s target for assassination. She had been conflicted. Her two closest friends, one woman and one ladyboy, both Thai courtesans, had been murdered by the Mexican when he had brought them to Mexico for his nefarious pleasure. She had been their bodyguard on the trip and had failed to protect them from being guillotined.

  Once she believed Cavalier may have been on a journalistic mission to investigate and expose Mendez for the murder of his daughter Pon, she had drawn him to Thailand where the Mexicans were in business. Jacinta wanted revenge for the deaths of her friends, which meant that she and Cavalier had more or less the same aim. At a critical point in Bangkok, she paved the way for the possibility of Mendez’s liquidation. After a successful assignment, Cavalier made his escape to Vietnam with Jacinta devising a high-risk plan to facilitate his exit. Now, a year later, she had found him in his Chiang Mai hideaway.

  Her manner was pleasant. He had seen her show aggression in the ring and elsewhere, but her body language was now unthreatening, even languidly relaxed.

  She stood stock still, looking as stunning as ever in a white silk blouse that fluttered in the breeze, light-blue slacks and flat-heeled white shoes. Jacinta held a businesswoman’s maroon-leather shoulder bag.

  ‘Empty it on the ground,’ Cavalier said, indicating the bag and remembering that she usually carried a small handgun in it. She obeyed and he stepped close to inspect the contents strewn on the grass.

  ‘I’m unarmed,’ she said and repeated, ‘Victor, I’ve come to help you.’

  ‘Drop your trousers,’ he said.

  Jacinta at first looked defiant. She glanced around her. A monk was walking in the other direction about forty metres away. When he waved his gun at her, she slowly undid the trousers.

  ‘I am shy,’ she said. ‘I’m not wearing knickers.’

  ‘Drop them,’ he repeated.

  Jacinta obeyed, pulling down her shirt so that it just covered her private parts as the trousers dropped to the grass, exposing her long legs. He moved closed. With the gun trained on her, he slipped his hand under her buttocks and inside her thighs.

  ‘See, nothing to declare,’ she said, and with a nervous giggle added, ‘nothing.’

  Cavalier motioned for her to pull up her trousers and to replace the bag contents. He put his gun back in the valise, but did not zip it, mindful of her incredible Muay Thai boxing skills. Before he could react, she had stepped forward and kissed him on both cheeks. Cavalier gave a nervous smile as he looked around.

  ‘Don’t worry, I’m alone,’ she said, placing her arm in his and beginning to walk. Jacinta scrutinised him.

  ‘Hmm, you are looking good, considering,’ she said with a sensual smile, ‘if I may say so, “the life you have been leading has etched itself into your face”.’

  ‘Where did you get that line? It’s a cliché.’

  ‘I read it in three of your biographical books on war generals. You said in an interview I picked up on YouTube that it was your signature cliché in all your tomes.’

  ‘How did you find me?’ he asked, perplexed and still cautious.

  ‘It wasn’t easy,’ she said, removing her sunglasses again. ‘I figured you’d keep writing. I scoured Australian papers and found the byline Laurent V Blanc. It sounded like a French name. There was never a source for his—your—online articles. I did a bit of hacking; a lot actually, over about six weeks. I found a server in Russia. I didn’t think you’d be there. Then I had the tough task of tracing your hidden ID. I figured you were either in Australia or France. When digging with this premise I ended up nowhere. Then I had a lateral thinking whim: where would anyone tracking you least expect to find you? Thailand, of course. And going along that path further I began to scour Chiang Mai.’

  Cavalier shook his head in amazement. Jacinta continued:

  ‘I knew you wouldn’t stay at Centara Hotel again. That would not be smart. Remember, I am an expert hacker. No one has my skills, certainly not in Thailand. I knew you would have Wi-Fi—to watch cricket on TV. I guessed you would have the same signal for your personal computer and not just use hotel or condo lobbies. You engaged a Thai provider. Then bingo! I found you! Well, nearly. You had to be receiving signals in either of three buildings—the Rajavej hospital, Holiday Inn or the Riverside Condo. I started with the Riverside Condo and the very helpful lady agent there named Joy told me there was only one person fitting your description in the apartments. I flew in this morning. Joy told me you were at a funeral here.’

  Cavalier had rarely felt more vulnerable.

  As if reading his mind, Jacinta added: ‘You shouldn’t worry. First, the hacker-tracker has to be looking for you. Second, they have to have my skills; and third, they need educated, very good luck. Who else, for instance, would know of your fluency in French and Thai? You are safe, my friend, Khun Victor.’

  ‘You went to all that trouble to trace me,’ he said, his eyes still scanning the monastery grounds. ‘Why?’

  ‘I had a very good reason,’ she said as they hesitated outside a ‘spiritual theatre’ of paintings, which depicted floating, yellow and purple-robed monks floating in an azure star-studded universe. They had a quick look inside before walking in a field of reproductio
ns of ancient Indian Buddhist sculpture. Jacinta guided him to a stone bench and invited him to sit with her. She took a folder from her satchel, removed photographs from it and handed them to Cavalier.

  ‘You know who that is?’ she asked, pointing to a female practising piano with a lean violinist, who had his back to the camera. Cavalier blinked, held the photo close and exclaimed:

  ‘It looks like … it could be … my daughter Pon! The hair is shorter … different colour … her face is fuller … but it is nine years since I’ve seen her; seven years since she disappeared.’ Cavalier stared at Jacinta, his expression demanding an explanation.

  ‘Please stay calm, Victor,’ she said softly. ‘It was me who sent you that terrible video, which made it look as if Pon was executed.

  ‘Beheaded!’ he said, his voice trembling.

  ‘Yes. I believed it was genuine. But I’ve since learnt that it was doctored by Mendez and Cortez to make it appear as if Pon had been murdered, and then passed on to me via Mendez’s cousin Ronaldo. She wasn’t killed. Cortez wanted to make it seem as if she were dead. He was desperate to take her for himself. He figured this would stop anyone, such as an investigator like you, coming after her.’

  ‘Pon is with Cortez?’

  Jacinta sighed, looked him in the eye and nodded.

  ‘How do you know?’ he demanded.

  ‘I don’t want you to judge me, please.’

  ‘Just tell me,’ he said, looking around. He was on edge in a surreal moment.

  ‘I had a hunch that you were a professional and could deal with Mendez. You did.’ Cavalier kept his eyes on Jacinta, looking for integrity in her words, or something else. ‘This time I have the true evidence about her with my own eyes. I took those photos. She plays piano with him. She is a captive.’

  ‘Go on,’ Cavalier urged.

  ‘When Police Chief Azelaporn was fired by the junta for corruption, just after you escaped to Vietnam, I was dismissed a fortnight later. I was out of work for nearly a year, until Azelaporn offered me a job recently.’