by Roland Perry
Cavalier walked down a dark alley, ignored offers from street girls and jumped on his Harley. As he adjusted his helmet, he heard a roar of bikes at the top of the alley. The two Russians who had come to the aid of their companion when he was felled called out to Cavalier. In a split second, he made a decision to take flight, not fight, knowing that a second brawl could be dangerous for him if the police arrived again. He rode off. The Russians gave chase. Cavalier picked up speed and headed for the motorway that took him north out of the city on the way to the mountains. The night air was cool as he built the bike’s speed.
Cavalier shook off his pursuers after about ten minutes. He kept the speedometer hovering at a hundred and ten kilometres an hour until he reached a lake that he had visited before. It was surrounded by huts, which by day made an open-air restaurant.
The place was deserted at night. He stopped his bike near the water’s edge and lay on his back in one of the huts. Cavalier glanced at his phone. There were messages.
The most important was from Gregory, who had sent a text: ‘MS wants to talk to you again.’
‘After that botched sting?’
‘It seems. She sounded on edge. Do you want to see her?’
‘She should book in at the Holiday Inn on Lamphun Road. I’ll find her.’
‘The CIA director of that project is out. She is in charge of a new operation and she has a big DEA war chest. If you decide to do anything, you may name your own price. Of course, I never told you that.’
Cavalier switched off his phone. He took a jacket from his bike and decided to cat-nap in spite of the protests from a score of croaking frogs. After an hour he drove steadily back to the condo without incident. He parked his bike as usual next to Ted’s wheelchair. A black cat was curled up on the seat. It stood up and greeted him as he dismounted the Harley. Cavalier stroked the cat. He smiled to himself as it preened, arched and meowed enough to show it was a good communicator. It brought back the words from Ted’s note about his desire if reincarnated:
‘I’d like to be a black cat.’
*
Two days later, Melody Smith returned to Chiang Mai and booked into the Holiday Inn. She was doing a workout in the gym there when Cavalier came in. He switched on one of the TV monitors, flicked to a US news channel and turned it up. The presidential election was on. Loud cheering and clapping accompanied a speech by a Republican front runner. Cavalier climbed onto a cross-trainer two metres from Smith, who was working hard on a stationary bike.
‘Oh, you are staying at the hotel?’ she asked, climbing from the bike and wiping sweat from her brow. She moved close to Cavalier, wiped her face on a towel and shook hands. Cavalier could smell her perspiration, mixed with too much of an expensive perfume.
‘Why did you have me followed?’ he asked.
‘I wanted to keep track in case we could rethink a deal. My agents were most impressed. After our dinner, you disappeared.’
‘They nearly found me.’
‘Yeah,’ Smith said with a half-smile, ‘makes me think you’d better help apprehend Jose Cortez before he tracks you down.’
Two Japanese men and a European couple entered the gym and began working out.
‘Can you meet me in the pool area after the workout?’ Cavalier asked. ‘It’s cool today. Only a few will be swimming at this hour.’
A half-hour later, they met by the hotel pool, Cavalier still in his gym gear and Smith in a one-piece swimsuit. The sun had peeped through the cloud. Two Chinese guests had moved into the pool area wearing their hotel dressing gowns. They shouted in Chinese at the door and were soon joined by a teenage boy. A Thai waiter brought Cavalier and Smith black coffees. The aroma was strong. Cavalier savoured it as if it were a top wine and smiled.
‘I love the smell of coffee in the morning,’ he said, ‘much better than napalm.’
‘Guess you read about the Risk, Talia Cruz event,’ she said, ignoring his light remark, and keeping her sunglasses on, despite the sky being grey and cloudy.
‘Reads like another failed operation,’ he said.
‘Not all of it.’
‘Should have used the Seals.’
‘It was not their kind of project. They can’t barge into a foreign country and densely populated area and take on a force of armed desperadoes.’
‘They could have been isolated at an airport, or a road …’
Smith shook her head.
‘You don’t know the terrain, the logistics, the circumstances. It needed special agents. It was a big op.’
After a pause, Cavalier asked: ‘Why didn’t it work then? Too many chiefs?’
‘There is only one now … me,’ Smith said in a half-acknowledgement that Cavalier was correct. ‘I want you on the team.’
‘Told you, I’m not a team guy,’ he said, and then, as if it was an afterthought, added: ‘I’d consider working with you, and you alone. It would have to be my plan.’
‘Can’t do it,’ she said, biting her lip.
‘Then there is no deal.’
Smith sipped her coffee. ‘May I ask what changed your mind? You were set against a few days ago.’
‘That’s my business.’
‘I can offer you a lot to be in on this,’ she said. ‘We need a good squad.’ She paused. ‘Look, you can be my number two, okay? This means I will be acting extrajudicially. We are not, by law, allowed to hire mercenaries.’
‘I am formulating a concept. It needs just one operative.’
‘You have a plan?’ she said with a half-laugh of cynicism.
‘I’m working on it.’
‘Cortez is in Bangkok. How can you—?’
‘I know how he is going to leave.’
Smith removed her glasses.
‘How?’
‘That stays with me at the moment. I have someone on the inside.’
‘You’re bluffing!’
‘You think so?’ Cavalier put down his coffee cup. He stood and added: ‘The figure is two million US dollars for my services.’ Smith’s expression twitched between shock and disdain, ‘one million up front and another million once the job is done, with seventy thousand expenses on top. Take it or leave it.’
Cavalier half-bowed, left the pool area and returned to his condo. Twenty minutes later, he had another text from Gregory.
‘MS is very steamed up about you. She wanted more information on you. Gave her nothing, of course. But she wants you, I ascertained that. Whatever you said, hang tough. She asked me twice if I knew how the Mexicans were leaving Bangkok. She is the top dog on the project. It puts her under pressure to deliver. I’m told that she presented such a strong case to control the show that she now must deliver, or be sidelined to a dead-end street, career-wise.’
‘How long should I give her to respond?’
‘She’ll have to gain higher approval, whatever your demands, and especially if you want to go solo.’
‘MS mentioned my request to go it alone?’
‘Yes. I told her you only operated that way.’
‘Thank you.’
‘I also said you were the best in the business.’
‘That deserves a beer or two.’
17
SWEET & SOUR MELODY
Melody Smith agreed to Cavalier’s terms with one caveat: that he committed to involving her team at some point in his schemes.
‘You’ll need back-up,’ she said in a face-to-face meeting, sitting on a sofa in the lounge of her Holiday Inn suite. ‘You can’t go it totally alone.’ She switched on her phone recorder. ‘Must have this for legal purposes.’ She asked for his bank details.
Cavalier didn’t react, but he was uncomfortable. He took a notepad from his valise, wrote the details on a page and handed it to her, saying, ‘As soon as I know the first tranche is in the account, I’ll implement the plan.’
‘Are you going to say how the Mexicans are leaving Thailand?’
‘Have you considered the options?’ Cavalier asked.
; ‘We figured they’d use a vehicle convoy to a port somewhere. Bangkok would seem the most obvious point.’ She looked at Cavalier. He remained impassive. ‘They couldn’t do it by plane unless they left the gold, or used a squad of transporters to drive it out.’
‘I’ll let you know in a week, maybe two. It’s going to take that long for me to put something in place.’
‘I have thirty agents ready. We need to know from a logistical point of view.’
‘Your aim is to eliminate Cortez, right?’
Smith pointed to the phone, indicating her remarks would be for the record. ‘The priority is to apprehend him and his men. Given his record of extreme violence, we must be prepared for casualties in any encounter.’
‘Meaning you will take him and them dead or alive?’
‘No, that is Wild West talk. We must work within the letter of the current law.’
‘Ok, I think I understand,’ Cavalier said, nodding and pointing at the phone, ‘and you wish to grab the gold.’
‘“Grab” is not a word we’d use,’ Smith said with manufactured indignation.
‘Secure the gold then?’
‘That contraband has been gained from illegal drug deals, people trafficking, prostitution, arms deals and even gambling. Some of the drugs end up in the United States, which comes under DEA jurisdiction.’
‘Even though all the cartel’s deals are done outside the US, in this case?’
‘The role of the DEA is to bust the big illegal cartels, if they have anything to do with the US, period. The Mendez cartel is still the biggest player in the US. If we break it and round up key operatives within it, then we are doing our job.’
Smith sounded as if she were making an Agency political broadcast. Cavalier had no doubt the recording would be used to impress DEA lawyers and DEA chiefs, or even politicians at a future Congressional hearing.
‘Let me say this,’ he said, picking up on the political theme as he leaned forward and spoke closer to her phone. ‘Once my plan is in place, I’ll let you know what is happening, even if you are not needed for the prime objective.’
They chatted for another half-hour, Smith attempting to lead Cavalier into talking about his achievements, which was to reassure both her and her superiors of his capacities, especially with the funds that would be invested in him. He divulged nothing beyond his travels as a journalist.
Frustrated, she asked him straight out: ‘Did you assassinate Leonardo Mendez?’
‘Why do you ask?’ he replied with a calm expression.
‘We were informed on good authority.’
‘By whom? Where?’
‘I can’t disclose that.’
‘You have to be careful of rumours.’
‘The Thai police say it was an incredibly well planned hit. They think the Mexicans know who did it. Cortez, we hear, believes it was an Australian posing as a Swede, who stayed at a hotel looking into the Bangkok’s Nana Plaza where Mendez was assassinated.’
‘What evidence is there?’
‘Cortez learnt it from the former Thai Police Chief Aind Azelaporn, whom he has hired for protection in Thailand, and, we assume, to deliver him out of the country safely.’
‘And how did you learn this?’
‘From contacts in the Thai police,’ Smith said. Scrutinising him, she asked: ‘Did you, or did you not, eliminate Leonardo Mendez?’
‘No,’ he said, staring her down. She stopped the recording.
‘I was kinda hoping you’d say “yes”. But you would say “no”, wouldn’t you?’
‘Sorry to disappoint. I’m just a journalist. Have been for more than thirty-five years.’
‘Nice cover,’ she said, with the only unforced smile he’d seen from her. ‘Just like Clark Kent, mild-mannered reporter for the Daily Planet.’ Cavalier still gave nothing away. ‘Can you give me some idea of your plan?’
‘I’ll divulge more when the first tranche is in the account,’ Cavalier said, ‘in addition to the seventy thousand expenses, as agreed.’
‘You must itemise all expenses,’ Smith said, ‘and collect receipts.’
She took a small plastic pack from her bag and handed it to him.
‘You’ll need this,’ she said, ‘for verifying you have completed your project. Its nickname is—excuse the expression—KK, for Killing Kit. It has been perfected ever since we destroyed Bin Laden in Pakistan.’
Cavalier opened the pack.
‘Has a very new feel about it,’ he said, ‘fresh out of the oven.’ He wrinkled his nose. ‘What’s that smell? It’s like formal-dehyde.’
Smith smiled. ‘The first of its kind the DEA has had,’ she said, ‘and yes, the plastic cover has a special cleaning preservative. Makes it fingerprint-proof.’
‘How?’
‘You’d have to grip it very hard with your fingers to leave a print.’
Cavalier was impressed.
‘It has three syringes of different colours, two swabs, a small camera about half the size of a mobile phone and two pairs of surgical gloves,’ Smith said. ‘The swabs are for wiping the inside of the target’s mouth for DNA verification. The yellow syringe is a tranquiliser; the red syringe is for a blood sample; and the blue syringe is for a lethal injection.’ She took a breath. ‘We’d prefer you acquired both a mouth swab and blood sample, but either will do. The camera is fairly new. If you press the button marked “1” you make the shot on the screen, just like a mobile phone camera. The innovation is button 2. If you press that from about one metre above the body, it will photograph the entire body of a person up to two hundred centimetres, regardless of whether it is the frame or not. We need photos of the face, profile and body to complete the ID.’
Cavalier exhaled audibly. ‘That is going to take a few minutes,’ he said with a grimace.
‘It must be done,’ Smith said. ‘We prefer you used the blue syringe—’
‘For the kill?’
‘It is preferable to a bullet. If you shoot him in the head, it may make recognition difficult.’ She paused and eyeballed him. ‘The person who liquidated Leonardo Mendez gave new meaning to the term. I’m told face recognition was not possible. He did not have one.’
Cavalier smiled thinly.
She added coldly: ‘Also gives new meaning to the expression, “saving face”.’
Smith kept staring, always assessing. If she wasn’t probing with questions, her eyes were forever exploring, looking for the ‘give’, the tiny mannerism or twitch that would expose a weakness, or the truth.
‘May not be able to reach that close …’ Cavalier muttered.
‘You’ll have to, for full recog and photos.’
‘Hmm,’ he said, ‘I’ll work it out.’
‘As soon as you can, email us the photo of your success and guard the swab and/or blood sample.’ Smith was enjoying Cavalier’s uncertainty. ‘You have used a syringe, I take it?’
He nodded.
‘You find a blood vessel in the crook of the arm—’ Smith began.
‘Not the easiest place,’ Cavalier interjected. He was imagining himself in the dark somewhere, ‘but it will all right on the night.’
*
At just before midnight, he felt like a bike ride to Wat Phra, the temple sixteen hundred and fifty metres up at the top of the rugged mountain Doi Suthep. He liked to wai the Buddha at the 24-metre-tall gold-plated monument, one of Thailand’s holiest sites. At this late hour, there would be fewer worshippers in attendance. The space, speed, and lack of traffic on the exhilarating ride always allowed him to think his way through issues. He wore a black jacket, helmet and night goggles and placed his Glock 17 in an inside pocket.
Just as he was driving off he noticed he was nearly out of petrol, so he turned into the Caltex station opposite his condo. One of six attendants filled his tank and Cavalier was about to leave when two farang bikers slipped in, next to two other bowsers. He was adjusting his helmet when he realised the new arrivals were the Russians who had chased him a f
ew nights earlier. Cavalier’s first instinct was to ride back across the road and into the safety of his condo. But if they spotted him, they would know where he lived. He turned his back on them and strode into the Tops store to buy a bottle of water. When he came out after a few minutes, one of the Russians pointed at him. The two Russians conferred as Cavalier strode across the petrol station forecourt. They seemed to have made up their minds that they had recognised him when he jumped on his Harley. One began running at him, knife in hand. Cavalier kick-started his bike and burst past the yelling Russian. Cavalier glanced back to see them giving chase. He hugged the river and ran two red lights in a scramble to reach the highway running north to the base of the mountain. The Russians nearly collided with a truck in their scramble to catch him. On the earlier pursuit, Cavalier had done everything to avoid confrontation so soon after he had manhandled their companion. This was different. The threat was not going away unless he took action. He began the mountain climb with the Russians only seventy or eighty metres behind. Cavalier put his foot down as he wound the bike up the steep slope, leaving his pursuers two hundred and soon three hundred metres behind. The road had tight turns and sharp inclines. It had him cornering at forty-five degrees, past a dog lying perilously close to the road’s edge, and two young farang on foot. He took a risk on a blind turn, speeding past a taxi red car, which struggled through the gears. Its driver hugged the low left-hand railing that formed a flimsy barrier to a cliff edge leading to an abyss of heavy, tangled undergrowth.
The Harley’s lights bounced over a large billboard picture of Thailand’s king and queen and a dirt road leading to a small temple. Cavalier slowed the bike near a bend in the road where he had stopped months earlier to do some shooting practice with his Glock 17 in the rainforest. He then braked hard, skidded off the road and scrambled behind a two-metre-high rock.
Cavalier waited, heart pounding. He could hear the whine of the two bikes as they strained up the mountain. He moved from behind the rock, and took aim at the bikes as they drew close. He fired twice. The first shot hit the front tyre of the lead bike, bursting it and throwing the driver onto the road. The second shot smashed into the back tyre of the second bike, shattering it, and causing the second rider to slam into the rock. Both the Russians lay prone in the road, holding their helmets, for more than a minute.