by Roland Perry
‘Want me to drive?’ Jacinta asked.
Cavalier shook his head. ‘I tried to talk her out of it.’
‘Your daughter? What was her name?’
‘Pon. Her mother, my ex, is Thai.’
‘May I ask how you met?’
‘I was on assignment in the Golden Triangle. She was a medical student earning money as a tour guide. She drove me from Chiang Mai where she was at university.’
They drove on. It was not yet eight o’clock and the road was quiet as they approached Mordialloc, about halfway to the shooting range. Cavalier played Ella Fitzgerald’s ‘Love for Sale’.
‘Odd, isn’t it?’ he said finally. ‘Mexico, where millions flock to frolic; Americans to Acapulco and Puerto Vallarta; Europeans to Cancúnu; rich Asians from everywhere now. Yet, under the surface . . .’
‘The drug business?’
He nodded.
‘I have some idea of the problems there too,’ Jacinta said. ‘The army seems to have made inroads.’
‘Oh, it has. That’s the most positive thing yet.’ Cavalier told Jacinta about how they had started by nabbing Colombia’s number one drug lord, Pablo Escobar, and that then the Mexican cops and military, with a lot of intelligence help from the Americans, had snared El Chapo. He had run Mexico’s Sinaloa cartel, which fed the hungry American beast over the borders with every drug under the sun.
‘Mendez has taken over,’ Jacinta said.
‘Yes, but he fears El Chapo who recently escaped from prison. Our American cousins have hinted to me that Mendez sold out El Chapo so he could take over the cartel. In the end, he created his own organisation. Now El Chapo wants it back. It’s another reason for Mendez to set up in Thailand.’
‘We heard that rumour too.’
‘Mendez is younger; what, thirty-eight? He’s more worldly. His father and mother were powerful lieutenants under El Chapo. They made sure their six children were educated in the US. Mendez went to Harvard business school. But he got bored and left after a year. He’s built up the empire by laundering money and buying into legitimate businesses. Now, I hear, he’s shifting his base to avoid arrest in Mexico or the States. They still do massive business in the States, but Mendez is thinking globally.’
‘He learned something at Harvard then.’
‘Oh yes. He would have made good contacts—future business stars and international lawyers.’
‘He bought them.’
Cavalier glanced at her and said with feeling, ‘I believe he’s the most brutal and deadly of the lot, if such things can be measured.’
Cavalier parked in the firing range car park, which overlooked a remote beach. He led Jacinta to a plain, unprepossessing building that, from the road, looked like a warehouse shed. After Cavalier pressed a button and asked to see Ms Georgina Parker, they had to wait outside a thick iron door. Soon, an attractive gym-fit redhead in her twenties appeared and led them to the anteroom of an underground bunker manned by two armed guards.
‘I have to inspect your weapons,’ Parker said, gesturing at Jacinta’s long carrier bag, which she placed on a counter and unzipped. ‘Ah! A Tikka M55!’ she continued, handling the weapon. ‘Did you ask for it?’
‘I asked for a sniper’s rifle,’ Jacinta said, glancing at Cavalier.
‘They’ve given you a standard SAS jobby. Not the best, but still bloody good. The Fins make ’em solid—rubber, steel and wood.’ Parker ran her hands lovingly over the barrel, bolt and detached night scope. ‘What are you practising for, Ms . . .’ she glanced at a sheet, ‘Cin Lai?’
Jacinta frowned and looked at Cavalier, who gave a slight nod. ‘She just wants to keep her eye in,’ he said with a smile.
‘I’m under orders to ask. Could I see the handgun?’
Jacinta unzipped a smaller bag inside the long one.
‘Hmmm!’ Parker said approvingly, ‘the SIG-Sauer P226. Bit old-fashioned now, but I use it myself. The US army recently knocked it back when they were looking for a nine-millimetre sidearm. I reckon they made a mistake.’
‘How long do I have?’ Jacinta asked.
‘Stationary or moving target?’
‘Both.’
‘Ninety minutes for each. Maximum range for the Tikka?’
‘Two hundred metres.’
‘Okay. That’s the limit of our bunker’s range. Handgun maximum range?’
‘Thirty-five metres.’
‘May I observe?’ Cavalier asked.
‘You’re not authorised,’ Parker said, running her finger down a list, ‘Mr . . .?’
‘Cavalier. Vic Cavalier.’
‘Ah, yes,’ she said, referring to a computer screen.
‘Mr Gregory told us you’d be coming with Ms Cin Lai.’
‘I thought you were going to play golf,’ Jacinta said.
‘I start in half an hour. Only doing nine rounds. I’ll just see you start, okay?’
‘If you are staying, why don’t you have a practice?’
‘Me?’ he said. ‘No, I’m as blind as a welder’s dog.’
‘What does that mean?’
‘My eyesight is not good.’
She kept staring softly at him, in a way that was more concentrated than intimidating.
‘You don’t wear glasses,’ she observed.
‘That’s just vanity. I use magnifiers to read in bad light.’
‘That’s nearsightedness, not far—’ she began but was interrupted by Parker, who swivelled in and gave her earmuffs.
‘Don’t need them,’ she said, ‘I’ll use the silencer.’
‘Afraid you have to wear them,’ Parker said. ‘Others’ll be firing close by in another booth. Not good for the eardrums.’
Jacinta accepted the earmuffs and they were ushered downstairs to a long subterranean shooting area. The five booths, each running to two hundred metres and about seven metres in width, were dimly lit. A thin mist from gas-driven weapons and cordite created an eerie atmosphere. The odour of cordite from two of the booths was suffocating, causing the shooters in them to wear face masks. The intermittent crash and rat-tat-tat of semiautomatic weapons was ear-splitting in the confined space. Each booth had a technician assisting the shooter, in front of whom the shooter would have to unload their weapon before their scores would be checked. Cardboard targets in human form were slid out at fifty, one hundred, one hundred and fifty or two hundred metres from the rifle shooters, and could be made to slide towards them at any pace they wanted.
Cavalier sat in a glass-panelled gallery to watch. Jacinta wasted no time, loading up, affixing the sights, calibrating and then firing first at a target a hundred metres away. Cavalier stood up to leave. Parker showed him out.
‘Sir, I see you were booked in for practice yourself.’
‘I changed my mind. Ms Cin Lai has taken my booking.’
‘There’s been a cancellation. You can have an alley in half an hour.’
‘No, I’m playing golf instead. And I’m not “Sir”. Vic is the name. Ask her to ring me when she’s finished, please. Oh, and could you make a note of her scores? I want to know how good, or otherwise, she is, but don’t let her know I’m interested.’
After six holes, Cavalier broke club rules and phoned Parker.
‘She’ll be through in about twenty minutes,’ she said.
‘How’d she go?’
‘Very, very well. On moving targets at fifty metres, it’d be a kill nine from ten. At a hundred metres, a kill eight from ten.’
‘And stationary targets?’
‘A hundred per cent kill ratio.’
‘Hmmm! How’d you rate her overall?’
‘Very high. In fact, I checked the record. One, maybe two, other shooters have a better one.’
Cavalier remained silent.
‘You were one of them,’ Parker said.
THE BUDDHA’S WAI
Cavalier and Jacinta travelled in silence along Beach Road in Melbourne’s horse-shoe-shaped Port Phillip Bay. It began to rain. Soon th
e only sound was the steady whoosh, whoosh of the windscreen wipers.
‘How’d the shoot go?’ Cavalier asked finally.
Jacinta made a so-so gesture with her hand.
‘You scored well?’
She nodded.
‘Where did you learn?’
‘When I joined the force.’ She paused, glanced at him and added, ‘I had an aptitude and a very good instructor.’
She switched on her iPad. ‘I had all your crime articles downloaded,’ she said.
‘Why?’
‘You are on top of the drug subject in Australia and the region. I wanted to see if you had any interesting information.’ She brought up an article headed ‘Death in Tonga’. ‘I didn’t know this detail,’ she said. ‘You say here that the Mendez cartel was shipping huge quantities of cocaine from the coast of South America, across the Pacific to the Queensland coast.’
‘Not just Queensland. They’re reaching New South Wales and Victoria too.’
‘Why would Mendez do this?’
‘The price,’ he said, glancing at her. ‘He could sell it for two hundred and fifty thousand a kilo in Australia, but for only a tenth of that in the States.’
‘Is there a big market here?’
‘Over half a million users. We have a most affluent middle class and it’s their drug of choice.’
‘Was much intercepted?’
‘The feds have caught about six boats. But, at first, about ten times that number were getting through, thanks to our vast coastline.’
‘What’s the value on the street?’
‘The feds’ve cleared up a lot of it coming from South America. Now it’s down to maybe half a billion.’
Jacinta fell silent. After a few minutes, she observed, with a broad smile, ‘I love the rain. It is so lovely over the bay, and the green is drawn out in all the gardens.’
As they approached Beaumaris, she asked if Cavalier was a Buddhist.
‘No. I have respect for the movement, though, with certain caveats,’ he replied. ‘My ex-wife is devout, if that applies to Buddhists.’
‘Will you wai the Buddha with me?’
Cavalier looked surprised. ‘I know where there are a few centres—’ he began.
‘I checked. There is one in Beaumaris. Could we stop there, please? I need to buy some fruit.’
Minutes later, they entered a small temple, where a pleasant smell of incense enveloped them. It was empty but for a young yellow-robed monk, who was sitting cross-legged in a corner, facing a human-sized gold-painted Buddha. Jacinta, carrying a box of fruit, put her finger to her lips and bowed. Cavalier followed her moves as she placed the food in a bowl, sat and held her hands in the prayer position. They remained like this for ten minutes and then left, the monk not moving a muscle.
‘I’m honoured that you asked me to join you,’ Cavalier told Jacinta when they’d stopped for a coffee at Leroy Espresso.
‘It is good for you to wai the Buddha,’ she said. ‘He is open to all. You are troubled. Surrender to the Buddha, and his spirit will enter you and be your salvation.’
‘I think I might be beyond it,’ Cavalier said in a low voice. ‘But why do you think I’m troubled?’
‘Your drinking, for one thing.’
He nodded. ‘It’s a problem.’
‘It has been since your daughter’s disappearance, I imagine?’
‘You imagine correctly.’
‘You don’t want to let go of her?’
‘No. Though my ex-wife’s managed to do it and claims that Pon is in a better place. She believes in reincarnation.’ ‘You don’t?’
‘I’d like to believe in it. It’d give a sense of a continuum, which is comforting for all of us. But, no, I’m sceptical.’
‘You should believe. It would centre you.’
‘And you—you had past lives you know of?’ he asked.
Jacinta nodded. ‘I was a warrior chief.’
‘A man?’
‘I have been a warrior on more than one occasion.’
‘If I believed in reincarnation,’ he said, ‘I would certainly believe you were.’
‘And will be again,’ she said. Then she added with a strange smile, ‘And so will you.’
They were interrupted by a high-pitched scream from the street outside the cafe. At first they thought a dog had been hit by a car but then realised the cry had come from a woman. Cavalier jumped to his feet and hurried out, followed by Jacinta. A tall, tattooed man was being felled by a diving tackle from a youth, who had a bystander helping him. The woman yelled that the tattooed man had grabbed her handbag. The two men wrestled it from him. Soon four men held the thief down. One of the cafe’s staff called the police, and the thief hurled abuse at everyone as a crowd gathered.
Jacinta moved close and stood over his head, looking down at him. The thief looked up: ‘What are you looking at, bitch?!’
Jacinta stared down and did not respond.
‘I’ll come and kill ya!’ the thief yelled at her, as the police arrived.
‘This sort of thing’s happening more and more,’ one of the cafe’s staff remarked as Jacinta and Cavalier resumed their seats.
‘I see it in Bangkok too,’ Jacinta said quietly to Cavalier, ‘and a decade ago, violence and drug addiction were barely related.’
‘It’s endemic here.’
‘Soon it will be in Asia.’
SOME FEDERAL ASSISTANCE
The next day, Cavalier met again with Gregory and Polly at the Lindrum to discuss the Labasta murder. On the rare occasions they wanted a meeting, there was, as with his intelligence contacts, a good reason. As always, Gregory started, and would end, the meeting by saying, ‘Remember you never met us.’ They sat a discreet distance from the other patrons in the dining area.
‘You’re looking better, Vic,’ Gregory said.
‘I’m okay,’ Cavalier said, ‘but thanks.’
‘Off the grog?’
‘Nearly.’
‘Gym?’
‘And running.’
‘Your Achilles . . .?’
‘Under control.’
‘Has Jacinta been useful?’ Polly asked.
‘The verdict’s not in on that one.’
‘We believe she’s a more powerful figure in the Thai set-up than she lets on,’ Polly said with a smile. ‘You may have to get closer to her.’
‘She won’t be with us much longer,’ Gregory said. ‘She’s being called back to Bangkok. We’re guessing, but we think it’s connected to information we have concerning the Mendez cartel. He appears to be setting himself up in Chiang Mai. It’s only a few hours’ drive from the Burma border, where the main drug factory is.’
‘Why would the Thais let him in, apart from doing some sort of deal?’
‘Our American friends believe some sort of “arrangement” is being cooked up, but they seem as clueless as we are. We’re involved because it’s drifting into our bailiwick.’
‘Mendez has booked out the luxury top floors at the Grand Millennium Hotel off Sukhumvit in about a month’s time.’ Polly was referring to a main road in Bangkok’s south-east. ‘His entourage will probably include about twenty-five bodyguards.’
‘What’ll Mendez do in Bangkok? Buy off the right people?’
‘Maybe just do “proper” business deals, for a start,’ Gregory said. ‘But who knows?’
‘I’ve decided to go there for a tournament—the Eighth Annual International Cricket Sixes.’
‘Will you see your ex-wife?’ Gregory asked.
‘No,’ Cavalier said, registering a flicker of disappointment. ‘She lives in Chiang Rai. Besides, she has a new partner.’
The others waited. Cavalier was reluctant to talk of his private life. His former wife Pin had never been comfortable in Australia where she had not practised medicine. When their daughter disappeared, she decided to return to Chiang Rai to work at a hospital. Cavalier’s assignments saw him on the move often and in the end, without the ‘glue�
� of the daughter, a gradual schism, rather than a split, occurred between them. Then Pin met another medico, with whom she wished to have a relationship. Faced with basing himself in northern Thailand, as opposed to Australia, Cavalier gave the new tryst his blessing, albeit reluctantly.
‘C’mon, Vic. What’s your main aim apart from cricket?’ Gregory prompted. Before he could answer, Polly said, ‘Among Mendez’s phalanx of bodyguards—all cut-throat murderers, we presume—is one we know about.’
‘Yeah,’ Gregory said. ‘Jose Manuel Cortez.’
‘He’s an oddball,’ Cavalier remarked. ‘Plays the violin and is an amateur military historian who loves his Chinese-emperor history. He was shot in a police raid in Miami. Lost an eye.’
‘He’s the Mendez cartel’s number one hit man,’ Polly added.
‘That’s how we know about Mendez’s little visit,’ Gregory continued. ‘The Americans have been tracking Cortez. He’s wanted for about eighty murders in the States alone.’
‘The cartel’s enforcer,’ Cavalier said softly.
‘The Americans alerted us that he was booking a flight to Bangkok. We then discovered that Mendez was setting up in Chiang Mai, with plans to visit Bangkok.’
‘Don’t rely on Jacinta in Thailand,’ Polly warned, ‘she’ll be different on home turf. She may even regard you as an enemy if you go snooping about, trying to dig up stuff on Mendez or any of his entourage.’
‘I’m aware of that.’
‘If I may give you some advice,’ she said, ‘elicit as much as you can from Jacinta while she’s here and we can perhaps help fill in the dots.’
‘We don’t think it’s wise to go to Thailand now,’ Gregory added. ‘You’d be an easy target if there was upheaval, especially if you investigate Mendez.’
The next day, Gregory phoned and asked Cavalier to meet him again at the Lindrum, but this time in his hotel suite.
‘I know you’re hell-bent on going,’ Gregory said as he poured him a mineral water, ‘so I’ve brought you some information to digest and then destroy. But this is strictly between us. Polly doesn’t even know I’m giving you something, all right?’ He opened a folder. It contained aerial shots of a factory. ‘That’s what you’re looking for. It’s about ten kilometres along the border, east from Three Pagodas Pass, inside Burma.