The Assassin on the Bangkok Express

by Roland Perry

  Cavalier paused before responding: ‘Mark Twain once said: “The two most important days in your life are when you are born, and when you discover why you are here”.’

  ‘When was that for you?’

  ‘On my first project.’

  Gregory pulled a face, and looked as if he might want to know more about this.

  Before he could, Cavalier asked: ‘What other thing didn’t I respond to?’

  ‘The question was, do you have any fears? Psychopaths often don’t, and certainly not concerning the consequences of their actions.’

  ‘I would fear being eaten by a shark or a croc.’

  ‘That’s not a serious answer, Vic. No one, not even psychopaths, put that down as a “like”.’

  ‘I used to really hate jumping out of planes during air force training.’

  ‘You had to do that? Doesn’t say much for the instructors and pilots.’

  Cavalier laughed. ‘All the blokes wanted to show how brave they were. We all went skydiving. I reckon I feared it most. But I did my best not to show it. In fact, I did it because it gave me the yips so much.’

  ‘How did the “yips” manifest?’

  ‘I would not sleep all night before going on a dive. I would wake in a pool of sweat. I would sometimes vomit in the club-house toilet before getting in the plane. Everyone joked and larked about before they jumped. I was silent. I jumped purely on adrenaline.’

  ‘How’d you overcome it?’

  ‘Never did. I just confronted it by jumping more often that anyone in the group. They all thought I was a daredevil. I even went gliding a few times, jumping off cliffs above the sea. It was my way of taking it on.’ Cavalier shuddered at the memory. ‘All in the name of machismo!’

  ‘Anything else that scared you?’

  ‘Public speaking.’

  ‘Huh! It’s often said to be worse than the fear of dying.’

  ‘I’d put it on a par with skydiving.’

  ‘But you are very good …’

  ‘I wasn’t a natural. I look back at cringe at my early efforts. I worked at it. Now I enjoy it.’

  Despite Cavalier’s mild tongue-in-cheek protestations, the doctors and Gregory concluded that he had almost nothing in common with psychopaths and serial killers, except a body count.

  *

  ‘Who do you regard as true psychopath?’ Cavalier asked Gregory a year later.

  ‘Your current nemesis, Cortez, although he does break the mould here and there. The CIA has done as much profiling as possible on him. He is a narcissist, who seems to enjoy murder.’

  ‘But he’s a contract killer. That work needs planning, following through.’

  ‘Correct. This is where he varies from the stereotypical psychopath, but he still seems to want direction. You are a classic instance. He has designated others to track you, rather than go after you himself. Hence the big price on your head. Cortez, we believe, has promised to fund your elimination.’

  20

  BLACK CAT CROSSING

  Cavalier had another strange dream a day after the first. It involved Ted, his wheelchair and the black cat he had seen in the week since the cremation. Cavalier was flying in the wheelchair, the cat on his lap, racing over the Chiang Mai district of Mae Rim, a beautiful cultural destination. He discovered he could make the wheelchair fly faster, especially when he was being chased by a motorcycle gang. The cat took it all in its sitting position, and merely meowed its approval as Cavalier propelled the bike faster and higher. Then he woke up, his heart pounding. He lay in the bed, trying to make sense of the pacy reverie, before falling asleep again.

  In the morning, he thought about the wheelchair. He was still not fully awake when an idea struck him; at first, he considered it an epiphany triggered by the dream. He had Ted’s passports. There was the wheelchair. He would board the train as Edward Blenkiron, who was still ‘alive’, for all bureaucratic and border-crossing purposes. In Cavalier’s experience, all brilliant ideas like this needed a time of filtering and consideration. By the end of the day he dared to think this radical concept might work.

  Cavalier would have to look two decades older. He had pictures of Ted. He blew them up on his computer, printed them off and studied the look in detail. Ted kept his good head of grey hair short and combed it over in an attempt to cover the hint of a bald patch. Cavalier’s thatch was thick with pepper-and-salt streaks of grey. Ted was a bit taller at a hundred and eighty-six centimetres, but their facial structures were similar. Ted wore prescription glasses. Cavalier had learnt enough about make-up over the years to do the touches that would make him look older. The only major difference was in the hair, which needed to be cropped. Cavalier needed an older male barber who knew about short back and sides, not a female ‘artist’ who would make him look young and modern. He found the right man down a side street next to the local market, and was given a cut even shorter than one he had in Bangkok in the previous year. It reminded him of his air force days in the early 1970s, when everyone else had long hair.

  He had just stepped out of the barber’s shop when another black cat sauntered into his path. He bent down and beckoned it to him. It turned, swayed over and rubbed itself against Cavalier’s calves. He patted and stroked it. If the cat was an omen, he was going to take it as a positive one.

  *

  With Jacinta’s secret assistance, he tracked down the designer of the Bangkok Express, Paul Witowski, a seventy-year-old Cambridge University-educated Pole who was working on a job in Melbourne. It helped Cavalier ease into a conversation with him.

  ‘You claimed to have implanted a few “signature” inclusions in your work,’ Cavalier said. ‘I’d love to know what they were.’

  ‘Is this for publication?’

  ‘Not in a newspaper. I am writing a book on “signature” items in everything from house designs to movies; what directors, for instance, put in all their films and architects put in their buildings.’

  ‘There is a market for that?’

  ‘Small. With photos and good illustrations, it will make a quaint niche-market product. A coffee-table book.’

  ‘I’m not sure I could do that.’

  ‘Why? Your trains have been running for more than forty years.’

  ‘Well …’

  ‘Okay, I understand if you built in a feature on the train that was dodgy or something …’

  ‘It wasn’t dodgy. I’m not even sure it would be on the Bangkok Express now, although it should be.’

  ‘Can you talk about it? Was it a hidden camera? A two-way mirror?

  ‘Good heavens, no! Nothing like that. It was a door catch.’

  ‘A door catch?’

  ‘It was in every presidential suite in each carriage. It was on a door that linked to an adjoining compartment or so-called state cabin. The catch was in the catch. It was hidden and only worked from the presidential suite side of the door.’

  ‘You say hidden …?’

  ‘You have to slide a finger down the left side of the door until you touch a slightly raised button five centimetres from the floor. Press it and the door latch is unlocked. But it has not been used since the Bangkok Express was constructed. The owners believe the door is a sealed-off partition.’

  ‘Nice signature.’

  ‘Thank you. It’s in some form in every train I engineered.’

  They chatted for an hour on the phone, Cavalier taking copious notes about a wide range of details on the train, from its brake design and emergency exits to the possibility of a man riding atop the carriages.

  ‘Why would you want to know that?’ Witowski asked, with a trace of suspicion.

  ‘I don’t know. It may be useful to include …’

  ‘An average-sized human could ride lying flat. He could also move along the outside. There are foot ledges for repairmen in the case of breakdown.’

  ‘Is there a special quarter for guards?’

  ‘Funny you should ask. I was recently contracted to reconfigure two of t
he carriages for storage. The Express often carries cargo in them for extra revenue.’

  ‘Any idea of the cargo?’

  ‘That is confidential.’

  ‘Can you talk about it off the record?’

  ‘Completely off the record, the company has doubled the Express’s armed guard. No one is allowed to use mobile phones or any sort of computer equipment en route. Its public relations people are saying that they wish to give “a timeless experience, reminiscence of the 1930s and the Shanghai Express”. This is bulltish. They are more than concerned about a terrorist attack.’

  ‘Concerned? Something is imminent?’

  ‘I was just doing the engineering, remember, but the way the train company’s people spoke about it, I’d say they have some intelligence that has put the wind up everyone.’

  ‘Hmm,’ Cavalier reflected.

  ‘Are you considering a trip?’

  ‘I was thinking about it, to take pictures for the book.’

  ‘I wouldn’t. It’s just too dangerous.’

  21

  SPIES ON THE STATION

  Jacinta emailed Cavalier the lay-out of the eight-hundred-metre-long train. There would be thirty-four carriages. It had sixty-nine airconditioned cabins, as well as a saloon, three dining carriages, a library and two bar cars. There were kitchen carriages and another three were for dining with different themes that would be used each night of the trip. There was also a long bar–lounge in the centre of the train that would be used for speeches, Thai dance performances and a classic music recital, which were open to all.

  Two carriages near the train’s rear, 31 and 32, would carry the bullion, watched over by the dozen armed Mexicans. They would always have six on watch either end of the two carriages to guard the chests of gold ingots and jewellery. Another two Mexicans were in carriage 30, where Cortez and his companion had a state cabin suite to themselves. The penultimate carriage, number 33, was the observation lounge. It led into the last, the observation car, which was furnished in gleaming brass and varnished Burmese teak. The last two were for use by all passengers, who had to make their way down the passageways of the two Mexican carriages.

  Cavalier looked up his bank account on the net and was pleased to find that his first tranche of a million dollars American, and an expense allowance of a further seventy thousand dollars, as requested, were in his account. Unless there was some unforeseen circumstance, his mission was now unofficially on. He made his bookings in a first-class carriage on the night train from Chiang Mai to Bangkok, and on the Bangkok Express.

  The Express would begin in Bangkok on 24 April, his daughter Pon’s twenty-seventh birthday and one he could not forget. The first night’s stop would be in Kanchanaburi, right opposite the major cemetery for British Commonwealth graves from World War II, which Cavalier had visited the previous year. The second day and night of 25 April would be spent travelling through to Southern Thailand. There were scheduled stops at Penang and Kuala Lumpur in Malaysia. The third night would be spent in that country before crossing into Singapore.

  Jacinta was able to send him the guest list of a hundred and twenty people apart from the party of fourteen Mexicans, which included Cortez and a woman travelling under the name of Fai Tang, who Jacinta said was Pon. They were in a special double-bunk cabin with an outsized lounge set up in carriage 30.

  ‘I have to vet them all on paper,’ she told Cavalier in a phone conversation that was secure due to her skills in creating a firewall around her communications. ‘When they come on board, I’ll be in charge of the face-to-face discussions. We won’t interrogate. We will tell the guests that we are doing routine questioning in line with international rules due to increased pressure from terrorism.’

  ‘Will Azelaporn be doing that too?’

  ‘I doubt it. He’s too lazy. He’ll be on board because he is contracted to do so by the Mexicans, despite hating trains. He can’t stand confined spaces for too long. This will be for him like a three-day plane trip with stops. He doesn’t like French food either, although the train’s master chef offered to give him Thai food every day. Azelaporn’s only joy will be with a couple of Chinese courtesans donated to him as sweeteners in business deals. They will accompany him.’

  ‘What’s he doing with the Chinese?’

  ‘Offering protection and facilitating introductions. They want property or to buy into operations, such as his bars and prostitution. He was fired by the junta for corruption, but that has not stopped him from having contacts everywhere. His power has barely diminished since he was sacked as police chief.’

  ‘Anyone else I should know about on the guest list?’

  ‘Just one superstar who everyone in Thailand knows: Dr Topapan Makanathan.’

  ‘The DNA specialist. Why is she making the trip?’

  ‘The form she filled in said simply “tourism”, which hardly seems likely. She’s a known workaholic. She will be travelling with her husband, Dr Marc Makanathan, a former Vietnamese heart surgeon who has the cushiest job in the junta-controlled government. He oversees Tourism, Sports and Arts. They make a true power couple.’

  ‘I’ll avoid them.’

  ‘Would be wise. In an emergency, she would rank higher than anyone on the train, even if there were police on board. She solves crimes, particularly murder.’

  ‘What sort of emergency are we talking about?’

  ‘Say a passenger died from food poisoning. She would take change of any investigation, and could overrule everyone else, especially with her husband there too.’

  ‘A sort of coroner?’

  ‘Something like that.’ After a pause, Jacinta said, ‘How do you plan to board the Express?’

  ‘Like to say, but better I don’t.’

  ‘How will I help you if I don’t know who you are posing as?’

  ‘You are being most helpful in your current position. I need to make it through the vetting.’

  ‘Will I recognise you?’

  ‘That will be interesting, won’t it? But either way it will solve the first problem I have—actually boarding the train. If you don’t pick me, then that will absolve you of any connection to what will follow.’

  ‘And if I do recognise you?’

  ‘That’s up to you.’

  ‘It’s high risk.’

  ‘Is there anything we both do that is not hazardous?’

  ‘I will have ten security people under me; not to mention the Mexicans. They will protect Cortez and the gold. He is obsessed with it. He uses a calculator every day to measure the gold’s value. Cortez is an unemotional type, but he does become stimulated about the Chinese and Indians buying gold and pushing up the price.’

  ‘He seems to have been excited about my daughter too.’

  ‘Please don’t do anything that will put you into a direct confrontation with me and my guards. It was bad enough last time when he chased you down the Mekong River when you were escaping. Cortez was hell-bent on killing you. I had to restrain him. Then you bluffed him in that phone call, which left me with palpitations.’

  ‘And him. How’d he react?’

  ‘He showed no emotion. Just wanted to murder you. It wasn’t until he thought you were leading him into an American trap that he backed off.’

  ‘Why did he think that?’

  ‘I made him believe the Americans were waiting for him.’

  ‘I should thank you for that.’

  ‘This time we have a far more dangerous situation, in confined spaces.’

  ‘Not on the stops at Kanchanaburi, Penang and KL.’

  After a long pause, Jacinta said, ‘You plan to—’

  ‘I have options,’ he said, cutting her off. ‘That is all I know at this point. I really won’t formulate anything until I’m travelling.’

  ‘You will bring your weapon? The one you carried in that oversized baseball bat?’

  ‘Cricket.’

  ‘Will you bring it with you?’

  ‘The bat, no.’

  �
��You would use a rifle on the stops—?’

  ‘As I said, I’ll have options.’ He changed the subject. ‘Anyone else of relevance among the guests?’

  ‘Not really. They are mainly retirees from England, France, the States and Australia. There are about six Chinese, of course they are everywhere; and two Japanese couples.’ Jacinta pondered for a moment. ‘There is one interesting Australian female psychiatrist from Brisbane travelling with her twenty-six-year-old adopted son. He has Down syndrome with autism.’

  ‘Hmm,’ Cavalier said, ‘where will your security people be?’

  ‘They will be mainly at the tail end of the train in carriages 28, 29 and 30.’

  ‘Protecting the Mexicans?’

  ‘I had no choice,’ she said defensively.

  ‘I expected that. I just want to know where they are.’

  ‘They will be between the Mexicans and the rest of the passengers.’

  *

  At 3 a.m. on the night before the Bangkok Express was due to leave platform 11, Hua Lamphong station, Bangkok, a truck backed up to the thirty-first carriage. Ten Mexicans surrounded the vehicle as its loud ‘beep-beep-beep’ split the hot night air. Three of them held AK-47 automatic rifles as if they were ready for combat. Under the curt direction of a nervous-looking Jose Cortez, the Mexicans were alert to the unlikely event of an attack as a hoist on the truck lifted steel crates up, over and into the opened carriage roof. Cortez paced back and forth, like a boxer just before an event.

  ‘Fast; efficient!’ he repeated several times, ‘move it!’

  Across on platform nine, the Indonesian couple Irina and Doug, dressed in tight-fitting black hats, pollution masks, jeans and running shoes, were watching through binoculars from behind the last carriage of another train. They put down their glasses, and using their phones, filmed the action on platform 11.

  Ten crates took about forty-five minutes to be dropped into the carriage. Its roof was then rolled back, closed and locked by maintenance men on ladders attached to the Express. Irina climbed onto the train on platform 9 to gain a better video picture. She was spotted by a worker on the platform. He yelled at her. This caught the attention of the Mexicans two platforms away,