The Honourable Assassin

by Roland Perry

  Moments later, all lights in the Plaza and the surrounding area went out. The air conditioner in the room shut off and the fridge groaned to a halt. Music from the bars died. The assassin checked the lights in the room to confirm there was, indeed, a power outage. Unperturbed, he watched the Temptations bar. Within seconds, two ladyboys emerged on either side of Mendez. One carried a candle. They all began smoking.

  The assassin mounted the chair, sniper rifle in his left hand. He angled the rifle out of the window and over his right shoulder. He used the weapon’s infra-red sights to pick out his target. Mendez was behind a pillar, in animated discussion with the ladyboys. The assassin could hear shouting from all over the Plaza as people reacted to the prolonged darkness. The two ladyboys gesticulated at the Mexican and moved back into the darkened bar, where candles were flickering. At first, the assassin thought that Mendez had followed them in. But then he emerged from behind the pillar. He was lighting another cigar. The assassin picked out the Mexican’s hands just forward of the pillar, but he would not waste a shot on them.

  Twenty seconds later, Mendez moved forward as he had before, and rested his elbows on the wall. He had his cigar in one hand and a phone in the other. He again seemed interested in the activity in the darkened beer garden, where candles had also been lit. The assassin picked out Mendez’s head, which was now motionless and lined up in crosshairs. The light from the cigar and phone further illuminated his face. The assassin pulled the trigger. The phut sound of the bullet leaving the barrel was followed by the thump of the target being hit.

  Mendez’s head exploded like a watermelon.

  The assassin used binoculars to observe his handiwork but could see nothing. Mendez’s lifeless body had crumpled to the corridor floor. The scattered pieces of bone, brain, blood and flesh had flown everywhere, some of it into the beer garden beyond a roof in front of the wall. The only reaction was from girls below in the Play School bar, who seemed to think that someone had dropped slimy food from above. Seconds later, an examination by the light from the girls’ phones caused one to scream.

  The assassin pulled the window in, turned the latch and slid the curtain across. He then began to disassemble the weapon and replace the parts in the canisters. It was a full two minutes before he heard piercing screams from the second level of the Plaza. Two ladyboys and two Mexicans had wandered out of the bar, only to stumble on the body of the stricken drug lord. The assassin didn’t look down at the scene again. Instead, he finished organising his pack, strapped it on his back and, after a final sweep of the room, left number fifty-eight.

  The lift was immobilised. He took the stairs to the now shadowy candlelit foyer. Unseen by any of the staff, including the receptionist, the assassin pushed out through the front entrance doors. The street, too, was in blackness, a useful cover for him to make his escape.

  Instead of moving along or across Sukhumvit, the assassin walked left, and left again, into Soi 4. He could hear agonised screams and shouts. A shot was fired. There was a burst of cracker explosions. He crossed the road, and strode past the entrance to Nana Plaza and on down the street. The sounds of police sirens and ambulance horns did not cause him to glance back until he reached Soi 6. He turned left again and picked up his pace, without running, past the Phachara Suites. Instead of following Soi 6 left again back to Sukhumvit, he continued straight on until he was approaching Soi 8. The second he was there, electricity was restored to cheers from everyone, particularly the bar girls. Two from the Blow Job bar accosted the blond stranger and offered their services, in the hope of scoring some business before the fast-approaching curfew. He brushed past them and scowled, causing them to back off.

  ONE WAY OUT

  At 12.50 a.m. Azelaporn arrived at the scene of General Gaez’s assassination. He went through the motions that would be expected of the nation’s most powerful police chief. He took charge, and informed the junta generals, who were in no hurry to go near Lumphini Park. After some fine acting in front of the TV cameras and reporters, telling the world that he would do everything ‘to track down the perpetrator’, Azelaporn took some questions from foreign media. Only one was pertinent.

  ‘Why was the building where the assassin may have struck from not policed like all the others?’

  ‘We don’t know where the assassin or assassins were. I will receive a report by noon.’

  He ignored any further questions and, surrounded by a police contingent, moved back to his car. General Gaez’s supporters had either dispersed or were being kept at bay by a phalanx of soldiers. They were promising to regroup, but their plans were in disarray. Gaez was the standout, bellicose commander and no other anti-junta leader was likely to emerge in the immediate future.

  In private, the junta was fretting over the likely reaction, given Gaez’s popularity. The generals expected to be the subject of innuendo. Already, blogs not under their control were comparing them with Putin and his methods of disposing of enemies. The junta put out a media bulletin denying any connection to the assassination, and vowing to find those responsible, which only accentuated the Putin comparison.

  By contrast, Azelaporn was feeling very satisfied. The one individual who had been calling for the chief ’s dismissal was a problem no more. All had gone according to plan and Cortez had been whisked to a safe house in Chong Nonsi within minutes of the assassination. But then Azelaporn received a phone call from a police commander on the spot at Nana Plaza In a daze, the chief asked for details. ‘Mendez’s head was nearly blown off,’ the commander informed him, and added details that were unpalatable even to the chief.

  Azelaporn redirected his driver, and other cars, to Nana and arrived at 1.15 a.m. The Mexicans were in a terrible state. Police had restrained seven of them who had drawn weapons when they heard about their boss. One had fired at the buildings around the Plaza. The junta generals had sent soldiers to aid the police but it was hard for army vehicles to move through the traffic. It was stationary all around Nana at Soi 4 and surrounding streets, especially Soi 1 and Soi 3 off Sukhumvit. These led to Bumrungrad Hospital, where the bodies of the two assassination victims were. When the combined forces reached Nana Plaza, they arrested all the Mexicans and dumped them in the cells of a nearby cop station.

  Azelaporn’s main concern was not who the junta would deal with or whether the Mexicans would withdraw from Thailand. He had to save face by finding Mendez’s killer. He had been at the Plaza only five minutes when he realised that the officers who had made preliminary investigations had no idea how the assassination had happened. Azelaporn made a call to his finest and most successful under-commander—Jacinta.

  She gunned her Harley to the Plaza, where the officers briefed her. None had thought to search the registers of surrounding hotels or make inquiries in other buildings overlooking the Plaza. She immediately suspected that the shot had come from an elevated position. Several bystanders who were in the Plaza during the incident swore that they had heard more than one shot in the dark. Then again, some fool had let off crackers during the twenty-three-minute electricity blackout, which hindered the police investigation.

  Jacinta made a tour of the Plaza and decided that only two buildings could have harboured the assassin, if the single, fatal, shot had been made from an elevated position. At 4 a.m. she entered the Majestic Suites, flanked by two police officers, and asked the sleepy receptionist behind the desk for the register. Jacinta questioned her for thirty minutes, going through the list of guests. She discovered there were eight Swedes staying at the hotel. One, named Peter Laarson, had been missing for two days. Another had arrived late last night. His name was Lars Nystrom. Jacinta asked for a description of Nystrom and took a copy of his passport photo. As she scribbled notes, she was joined by a frustrated, angry Azelaporn, who had been blasted by one of the junta generals over what had happened.

  ‘I’ve been threatened with being fired or worse!’ he yelled. ‘Someone will pay for this!’

  Jacinta left him to his unhelpful
raging and rode the lift to the fifth floor, with two police officers and the receptionist in tow. Guns drawn, they entered room fifty-eight. The only evidence was an opened bottle of beer and a packet of cigarettes. Jacinta pulled the curtain across and looked down to the low wall where Mendez had been hit.

  ‘We’ll chat to all the people on this floor,’ she said to the others. ‘Laarson and Nystrom are the only ones missing from their rooms.’

  ‘You think it’s him?’ a still-fuming Azelaporn asked Jacinta as he examined the photo of Nystrom, which showed him with a blond moustache and clipped goatee beard.

  ‘He has to be high on our list of suspects,’ she said. ‘Let’s make room fifty-eight part of the crime scene. We’ll start by taking fingerprints . . .’

  An exhausted Jacinta arrived at her apartment just before 5 a.m. She crawled into bed, her body still aching from the fight only thirty hours earlier, but couldn’t get the image of Nystrom out of her mind. She examined the passport photo with a magnifying glass.

  After several minutes mulling over it, she picked up her mobile and phoned Cavalier.

  His phone rang just as a bedside alarm sounded, startling Waew.

  Jacinta asked, ‘Have you been at the hotel all night?’

  ‘Yes, why?’

  ‘Do you know what happened?’

  ‘You mean the shooting of General Gaez?’

  Jacinta paused. ‘No, that was bad enough,’ she said and then told him of Mendez’s assassination.

  He stood up and paced the room, saying, ‘No, I don’t believe it! . . . Who . . . how did it happen? Who did it?’

  ‘Have you witnesses to your whereabouts through the night?’ Jacinta asked, her voice edgy.

  ‘Yes, Jacinta, I do. She’s right here. She spent the night with me. What are you suggesting?’

  ‘Nothing. Chief Azelaporn is very annoyed. Mendez’s death means much to him. I am sure you understand. He wants me to round up anyone with any connection to him.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘You were investigating Mendez in Chiang Mai.’

  ‘You know why. The way those two prostitutes were killed would make any investigator suspicious of a link to Mendez, given his history, wouldn’t you think?’

  ‘That’s not the point. Azelaporn is determined to catch the killer, or at least lay blame somewhere. You’ll have to be interviewed.’

  Cavalier took a deep breath.

  ‘Okay. How do we do this?’

  ‘You must report to the SIU offices.’ Jacinta gave him the address.

  ‘What time?’

  ‘I’d like to be there. I’ve been up all night, so shall we say noon?’

  ‘Make it 2 p.m. You sound exhausted.’

  ‘Okay, 2p.m.’

  ‘Thank you, Jacinta,’ he said with feeling. ‘Thank you.’

  She paused before she said, ‘I think I should be thanking you, shouldn’t I?’

  He allowed himself a smile. ‘You know, I must be honest with you,’ he said, choosing his words carefully. ‘I’m extremely satisfied that Mendez is dead. He murdered my daughter.’

  ‘I didn’t tell you how he was killed,’ Jacinta said.

  ‘How?’

  ‘He was nearly decapitated. It would have to be the combination of a very accurate sniper at fifty or sixty metres and a special kind of new military bullet.’

  Cavalier was silent.

  Jacinta added, ‘Ballistics is looking for fragments in Nana Plaza as we speak.’

  ‘Please let me know what you find out.’

  ‘I’ve only seen one similar result from one single shot before.’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘In Melbourne, when Labasta was assassinated.’

  *

  Cavalier rang off and dressed. His received a text from Gregory in Melbourne, where it was after 8 a.m.: ‘Are you okay? You’ll come under suspicion. Do you need help to exit?’

  ‘I’m fine,’ Cavalier texted back. ‘Have departure plan. Executing soon. No panic.’

  He kissed Waew as she wandered drowsily to the bathroom to take a shower. Cavalier had packed by the time she had finished.

  As she was drying off and he was shaving at the bathroom basin, she said, ‘I had too much to drink last night.’

  Cavalier wiped his face and held her. ‘But we enjoyed it, didn’t we?’ he said, kissing her.

  She smiled. ‘I don’t normally do that with clients,’ she said shyly.

  ‘You slept very well.’

  ‘Did I snore?’ she asked, going red and putting her hand to her mouth, Thai-style.

  ‘Just a little.’ He made a light snoring noise.

  ‘No!’ she said, slapping his arm playfully. ‘I am so sorry! So sorry!’

  ‘It’s okay,’ he laughed.

  ‘Did I keep you awake?!’

  ‘I haven’t had much sleep,’ he said with a smile.

  ‘You won’t want me to stay again!’

  ‘Not true. Besides, you need to work on my Achilles before Saturday’s game.’

  ‘You sure you don’t wish to come to the studio?’

  ‘Can I call you later? The city may be in turmoil tonight.’

  *

  Cavalier and Waew left the room together.

  ‘I have a different way out of here,’ he said as he led her down the staircase, rather than taking the lift. ‘You didn’t sign in last night and it’s probably better that reception has no record of your visit.’

  Cavalier led her through the kitchen to a small backyard with a locked gate. He fiddled with an all-purpose Allen key, and removed the lock. Waew giggled as they went through the gate, past a row of rubbish bins, and down a very tight pathway between a fence and an adjoining apartment block. He had to move sideways and hold his suitcase beside him to squeeze along it for about thirty metres, before turning left into an alley that took them back to Soi 10.

  At Sukhumvit, he kissed Waew goodbye and put her in a taxi. Then he hailed one himself. ‘Suvarnabhumi airport,’ he told the driver and looked at his watch. It was 6 a.m. He had eight hours before he was due to meet Jacinta at SIU headquarters. Cavalier scrambled for his phone. There were eighteen messages. He ignored them and began trying to book a plane out of Thailand. There was an 8 a.m. flight to Melbourne but he would have to rely on a passenger cancelling or not turning up. He anticipated the likely rush by thousands of tourists to leave now that the international airports were operating again.

  The traffic was heavy even for early morning. There were more than the usual amount of military vehicles and tanks rolling both ways. Cavalier now checked his emails and text messages. There were several from Gregory and Driscoll, wanting to know what he was doing. Driscoll had learned of Gaez’s demise but not Mendez’s, which Cavalier thought was predictable. Initially, only intelligence agencies would learn of Mendez’s assassination. The junta generals and police would be keeping it quiet for as long as they could.

  Despite the traffic, it took only fifty minutes to reach the airport. Cavalier used binoculars to look ahead. He could see police and military roadblocks in the distance. Then the driver received a call. He informed Cavalier that the airport had been closed.

  ‘Did they say why?’

  ‘That was only my base,’ he shrugged. ‘They don’t know anything more.’

  ‘Okay, head for Don Muang.’

  ‘That will probably be closed too,’ the driver said.

  ‘Can you check? Leave this road before the blocks.’

  The driver looked at him a fraction nervously.

  ‘I don’t want to be held up any longer than necessary,’ Cavalier said with a half-smile.

  The driver nodded and again checked with the taxi base. After a lengthy conversation, he turned to Cavalier and said: ‘It’s open. It will cost five thousand baht extra.’

  ‘It’s normally about four hundred baht between the two airports,’ Cavalier said, staying calm in the face of the mild extortion attempt. He didn’t wish to sound desperate, despite his growing
concerns. If he bargained, it would seem normal. If he said yes, it would seem odd, especially from a Thai speaker like himself.

  ‘Four thousand baht,’ the driver said.

  ‘Six hundred,’ Cavalier said, ‘plus the four hundred to get here. It’s a thousand all up, okay?’

  The driver nodded, clearly not prepared to argue with his Thai-speaking farang. He touched the tiny swaying Buddha figurine attached to the rear-vision mirror. Then he swung off the main freeway at an increased pace and down a slip road. He was soon heading towards the old Bangkok international airport, Don Muang. Cavalier used his phone to find that only one Air Asia flight had seats available and to just one destination outside Thailand—Cambodia’s capital, Phnom Penh. Cavalier tried, without success, to book it over the internet.

  He received another text from a concerned Gregory. ‘Travelling well?’

  ‘So far. On the way to Don Muang.’

  ‘I’ll see if I can get help there.’

  ‘No, please. I’ll be in touch if there’s a problem.’

  ‘You may leave it too late.’

  ‘I won’t.’

  Cavalier stopped texting and switched off the phone. He noticed the driver watching him in the rear-vision mirror.

  At the airport, Cavalier found a toilet and shut himself in a cubicle. He fished out the one false passport he had yet to use, that of Englishman James Osborne Bolt. Then he found the last wig, which was dark brown and best suited his very short haircut. He added glasses and was transformed into the freelance gym instructor he was described as on the ten business cards he now transferred to his wallet. Bolt marched to the airline counter and attempted to book a seat on the flight to Phnom Penh. The staff member on the desk informed him that the flight was overbooked and he would be on a waiting list. She photocopied his passport details and photo.

  ‘That’s new,’ he said.

  ‘Government orders from this morning.’

  Cavalier looked around. Police were making random checks of male passengers. He sat near the counter with five other hopefuls on the waiting list. Four were women; one was an elderly man. Three police approached Cavalier.