by Roland Perry
Nok took Cavalier up two flights of stairs to a room. She began to undress in a ho-hum manner; he was now just another customer.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said in Thai, holding his forehead. ‘I’m not feeling that well. Could you just massage me, please? I’m also pretty tense. I’ll pay you extra.’
‘That’s okay,’ Nok said with a big smile as she stripped to bra and panties. ‘I do massage.’
He removed all his clothes. Nok was good, working over his neck, back, shoulders and glutes. She speared into the little knots. There were plenty of them.
‘You are so tense!’ she observed, ‘and your rhomboids are terrible.’
‘Well, thank you,’ he said, ‘that’s the first time someone’s mentioned my rhomboids with such enthusiasm.’
Nok laughed. She tried to converse with him about his background, but he gave nothing away. ‘Let me massage you,’ he said after she’d been working for an hour.
‘Okay,’ she shrugged, and Cavalier went to work, looking at his watch every so often. At 2 a.m. he told her he had to be at the airport by 5.30 a.m.
‘I can drive you,’ she said, ‘I have a car.’
‘That’d be terrific!’ he said with feeling. ‘I can pay you.’
‘That’s okay,’ she said once more, with a warm smile.
After her massage, they slept until 4.45 a.m. Both showered and dressed, and Nok led him to her car, a Volkswagen sedan, which was parked in the alley he’d run down after making his abrupt departure from the ladyboys on Kotchasarn Road. She then drove him through the deserted streets to his car. He transferred his luggage to the boot of her sedan.
‘What’s wrong with your vehicle?’ Nok asked.
‘Brake trouble,’ he said without elaboration and, changing the subject, commented, ‘You’ve done well to have a car.’
‘I have two jobs—massage in the day, bar girl at night.’ She glanced at him with a grin. ‘My parents are generous too.’
In twenty minutes, they’d reached the airport without incident. It was still dark. Soldiers had put a roadblock in front of the car park. Two of them approached the Volkswagen and asked for Cavalier’s ID. They told him that there would be no flights. Again using halting French cum English, he explained that he was assisting a doctor, who would be using a private plane. The soldiers began discussing what to do.
‘Offer them money,’ Nok whispered.
‘If this will help,’ Cavalier said to the soldier, presenting a five-hundred-baht note. The soldier took it and waved Nok through to the car park. Cavalier directed her to the area where Dr Na kept his vehicle.
‘Thank you,’ he said, kissing her. He took out three thousand baht from his wallet and handed it to her.
‘We agreed two thousand,’ Nok said with a bemused look.
‘You have driven me here,’ he said. ‘I do appreciate it.’
Nok kissed him on the mouth. ‘When do you return?’ she asked.
‘Don’t know.’
‘Please phone me,’ she said, then insisted he put her number in his mobile. She offered to stay with him until Dr Na arrived but he told her to leave.
‘I don’t know how long I’ll be waiting,’ he said.
‘Just one question,’ she said as she helped him remove his luggage. ‘Why didn’t you speak Thai to the cops and soldiers? You speak it so well!’
‘Ah . . . it’s a long story,’ he said with a smile.
Nok shrugged, kissed him again, and drove off. When the Volkswagen was out of sight, he ducked down beside a car, took off his wig and glasses and put them in his backpack.
He kept an eye on the time. When it ticked towards 6.30 a.m. and the first fingers of dawn crept over the airport, he became worried. He phoned Dr Na, who was apologetic, explaining, ‘Soldiers have stopped me twice!’
He arrived at 6.45 a.m. and led Cavalier to his plane, without any checks or questions from security. ‘Security has taken the day off,’ he said with a giggle. ‘Always do when the airport is closed.’
BANGKOK CLOSED
Cavalier and Dr Na took off in fine weather, and were surprised by the amount of military air traffic as they floated along on the three-hour trip to Bangkok. Cavalier excused himself and slept for the first two hours. He was exhausted after the exertions of the past twenty-four hours.
When he awoke, Dr Na asked him if he’d had a wild night.
‘Why? Do I look fatigued?’
‘Very much so.’
Cavalier stretched, examined a map, the instruments and the terrain three thousand metres below.
‘The women of Chiang Mai can be very alluring?’ Dr Na said, by way of a prompt.
‘Do you partake, Doctor?’
‘No—my wife would kill me!’ he said with a chortle. ‘I suppose I ask because it gives me vicarious insight.
I work very hard as a doctor; don’t get much time to play.’ He paused. ‘And, in any case, seeing a thousand AIDS victims is very off-putting.’
They flew on for another few minutes before Cavalier asked, ‘How were your days in Chiang Mai? Busy?’
‘Very! I was doing a bit of locum work at the local trauma hospital.’
‘Oh? Traffic accidents?’
‘Not only. We had a few accidents on farms. Two people were shot by soldiers in a riot. There are some people still risking attending demonstrations after the curfew time. They are asking for trouble.’
‘Any motorbike deaths? I always hear about crashes on the roads here.’
‘Oh yes, of course. About twenty,’ Dr Na said ruefully. ‘Bike fatalities and terrible injuries go without saying in Thailand.’
‘I did see a bad accident last night,’ Cavalier said, looking ahead and sounding casual. ‘A semitrailer rear-ended one of those military-style Humvees.’
‘Yes, four people from that—all Mexicans. Very nasty people too.’
‘No bad injuries, I hope?’
‘Don’t really know. One had facial lacerations. He was already missing an eye from another accident, I gather. But they were all whisked away by the police before we could examine them.’ After a long pause, Dr Na said, with a thoughtful squint, ‘There was another most unusual situation, which I had to assist the coroner with.’
Cavalier waited.
The doctor glanced at him. ‘Decapitations,’ he said.
‘How awful!’
‘They were grotesque, and . . . well, strange. We’ve had a few drug crazies go mad with axes and swords. They are dreadful, because the victims are often hacked up in the process.’ He paused to listen to a radio message from traffic control at Bangkok. Then he resumed, ‘The two headless victims I saw had been dealt with almost surgically, so clean were the cuts.’ He looked at Cavalier again. ‘Cutting off human heads is not easy.’
Cavalier winced.
Dr Na added, ‘The coroner reckons that either a really experienced surgeon did it or . . . or it was done by a guillotine . . .’
‘Really?’
Dr Na nodded. He added, almost with admiration: ‘They were such clean severances! But who would do such a thing? It has the coroner and the police baffled. We know some crazies have samurais. One was stolen from a Japanese couple living in Chiang Mai. There is now a big community of elderly Japanese who come here to die, you know, to see out their lives. It’s cheaper and the climate is better than where they come from. Japanese people from that age group all seem to have some sort of medieval sword in their homes. The police are checking that community. But I doubt it could have been any one of them. The Japanese are very good citizens.’
Cavalier wanted to ask several questions but checked himself. Dr Na had been most helpful and generous, but he didn’t want to give him any clues about his own investigation. He felt he could trust no one after what happened when he spoke to Mamasan Mali at Foxy Lady.
They slipped on, buffeted by turbulence, and with several stomach-churning drops and dips. But the flight was nothing like the terror and danger of the previous trip. Cavalier
had time to think through his Bangkok plans. He felt certain that the police, through Jacinta, would keep tabs on him and they were sure to be able to trace him easily enough. He decided to stay at the Galleria 10 again. It would make his activities easier.
‘And what do you plan to do in Bangkok?’ Dr Na asked, as if reading his thoughts.
‘Not much,’ Cavalier answered carelessly. ‘I might watch the boxing match on TV. I’m told the junta has opened the sports channel for it. A big, powerful farang against a “woman”. A famous ex-Thai champion who had a sex change. Sounds like a mismatch!’
‘For the man, yes,’ Dr Na said with a snigger. ‘I am betting he will be beaten!’
Cavalier waited for an explanation.
‘The odds are too good to miss!’ the doctor said. ‘I managed fifteen to one.’
‘That’s remarkable.’
‘It is, but there has been a big plunge on the transsexual since I put my bet on. You could still get ten to one.’
‘Did you put much on her?’
‘Twenty thousand baht. Don’t tell my wife!’ Dr Na said with a grin.
*
They arrived at Bangkok’s outskirts midmorning. It was hotter than in Chiang Mai. On the tollway into the city, there was little traffic except for military vehicles.
‘You’d think we had been invaded,’ Dr Na chuckled as he gunned his hired Audi past two lumbering tanks. Twenty minutes later, and only ten kilometres from the centre, the traffic came to a standstill. It took another ninety minutes to reach Galleria 10. Bangkok, with its heat and glacially moving traffic, made Cavalier feel claustrophobic. His phone rang. ‘Welcome back!’ said Jacinta. ‘Did you get what you wanted on your trip?’
‘Yes, I did, nearly. I wanted to make a century at Prem. Fell two short.’
‘I don’t know what that means. I was talking about your investigation.’
‘We should meet.’
‘It’ll be difficult for a few days.’
‘Your fight is on Tuesday night?’
‘I have Monday and Tuesday off work, but I am busy.’
‘I think we should meet as soon as possible. I’ll fit in with you.’
Jacinta was silent for a few moments. ‘I’ll text or phone you,’ she said and rang off.
‘You know her?!’ Dr Na said in awe.
Cavalier explained, without giving specifics, that they had worked together on a project.
‘Are you going to the fight?’ Dr Na asked excitedly.
‘I hadn’t planned to.’
‘She is your friend?!’
‘Work acquaintance.’
‘You must come to see her! I shall try to buy tickets.’
Once checked into his hotel, Cavalier read online previews of the Muay Thai fights, on Tuesday at the Lumpinee Stadium in the city’s south. The special ‘unofficial Muay Thai World Championship’ would start at 8 p.m., due to the curfew. The Russian world champion, Yuri Ivanovitch Goulov, weighing in at a hundred kilograms of ‘rippling muscle’, would be challenged by ‘a former Thai Champ’, The Flying Angel—Jacinta—who was said to be just fifty-nine kilograms.
Cavalier watched an internet clip of the Russian, in which the brute disposed of an American challenger in three rounds. His arms were huge and he punched with force, but his footwork was slow for a Muay Thai champion. Cavalier replayed the fight and then found another video of the Russian, in an illegal cage brawl with a Ukrainian, whom he poleaxed with a fearsome right cross. That match went for four rounds of a scheduled twelve-round bout. He replayed that video too and took notes.
Over a light lunch in the hotel, Cavalier read website articles on the coup’s progress, and was disturbed to learn that several local and foreign journalists had been picked up and interrogated. Some had been detained by the junta. A French correspondent had been deported; a female English TV reporter had been given notice she had to leave. Other stories mentioned that Gaez now had ‘at least 30,000 soldiers ready to take up arms for him if he decided to depose the Junta’. But these reports were unconfirmed and isolated; Cavalier thought the language in the articles smacked of propaganda. Perhaps, he mused, Gaez was helping his negotiating position in the current stand-off with the junta.
Cavalier walked to Sukhumvit, where crowds were gathering near Asok for the day’s demonstration. This would mean confrontation. Soldiers, rifles at the ready, were marching next to armed vehicles and water cannons.
‘What’s going on?’ he asked a cop a few paces away.
‘The military is making sure what happened last night is not repeated,’ he said. ‘You’ll have to stay off the streets.’
Cavalier had read about battles in the streets off Sukhumvit the night before. There had been shooting but reporting of it had been limited by the junta’s strict rules.
A shot was fired and everyone, including the cop, ducked. Cavalier thought it had come from a footbridge across Sukhumvit, to his left. Soldiers propped and fired back. Demonstrators ran for cover. The cop moved to the cover of a roadside pillar and waved his gun at Cavalier, yelling, ‘Get out of here, fast!’
Cavalier hurried down Soi 10 to his hotel, where Japanese tourists were filing onto a bus, only to have the hotel’s security guards tell them to get off again. There would be no sightseeing tour today. He retrieved his binoculars and camera from his hotel room and hustled down to the street again. He reached the entrance to Chuvit Garden, running next to Soi 10, and walked through it to Sukhumvit. Water cannons were letting loose torrents that spreadeagled the crowd. Those who couldn’t avoid the water, which hit them with considerable force, were left concussed on the road. Resistance at ground level evaporated but foolhardy rebels on the footbridge over Sukhumvit were using rifles to fire at the soldiers and police. Soon they were cornered in the middle of the bridge and forced to surrender. Cavalier used his phone to take photographs and video of the incident. People began running past him through Chuvit Garden, causing him to retreat once more to the sanctuary of the hotel.
He decided against sending the footage to Driscoll, knowing that she would use it immediately. That would only cause the junta to track him down and stop his activity, one way or another. He calculated that to complete his mission, he needed at least one more week in Bangkok, and much would depend on what he could learn from the enigmatic Jacinta. The city was in near shutdown. He would be limited in where he could go and whom he could see. For now, he rested in his hotel room and checked emails. He received a late-afternoon call from Jacinta.
‘Tomorrow I visit the temple: Wat Phra Kaeo at the Grand Palace,’ she said. ‘Would you come with me? We can find time to chat.’
‘What about the riots?’
‘They may cease tomorrow. There is talk of a truce. In any case, I shall bring my motorbike, and maybe an escort.’
‘I’ll come,’ Cavalier said. ‘Thank you. Are you going for anything special?’
‘I must pray for guidance over the fight.’
‘You believe the Buddha will help?’
‘He always does.’
Why, Cavalier wondered, was she almost solicitous towards him? He dined alone in his room, and idly watched TV. He tried to read the Iraq War book and fell asleep at about 10 p.m. He awoke twice to the sound of muffled gunfire and explosions.
THE MONK
At just after 5 a.m., the end of the night curfew, Cavalier took the Skytrain to the 142-acre rare Bangkok open space known as Lumphini Park. Rumours were flying, and it was even speculated on in the press, that this would be the place for the radical General Gaez’s rallying speech to demonstrators sometime during the week.
Cavalier walked over to the statue of King Rama IV, who created the park in the nineteen twenties, and looked up and around at the various buildings facing it. There were joggers out and about. A steady stream of military vehicles, including tanks, was moving to potential hot spots around the city.
As he walked back to the train, Cavalier received a text from Gregory in Australia: ‘Had a strang
e call from Jacinta. She got in touch with the firing range at Mornington and tried to find out who had a better shooting record than her.’
Cavalier replied, ‘Why would she do that?’
‘The woman at the range gave her nothing and referred her to me. She hasn’t called. I think she’s delving deeper into your record.’
Cavalier worked out in the hotel gym and pool for an hour, and, checking his weight, found he had dropped three kilograms, to eighty-three. His regimen was making him stronger by the day, and he was drinking far less. He had breakfast at Viva on Soi 8, not far from his hotel. The simple open cafe, with its leather-padded seats, wooden tables and friendly staff, had an appealing ambiance. The sun was blazing by 9 a.m. and smells from food stalls wafted everywhere. The streets were still calm. Police had cleared Sukhumvit of vehicles except for those with special passes. The traffic was lighter than Cavalier had ever seen it and he wondered why the area had been partially closed. He figured it may have been to stop trucks and busloads of protesters coming in.
He checked the local news on his phone and learned that General Gaez, now the all-powerful leader of the protesters, had met at midnight with the junta generals, and they had nutted out a truce, which Jacinta had mentioned the day before. It would run for ninety hours, which would take the temporary peace to midweek. In that time, both parties promised, there would be further talks. Gaez said that this would give the junta generals time to consider standing aside; and the junta generals, in turn, said Gaez might be arrested after that time, if he did not desist from his ‘criminal and inflammatory practices’. No commentator could say who was bluffing, or if they both meant business.