The Honourable Assassin

by Roland Perry

  On one side, there was the junta and a big part of the military, and the police. They essentially backed the king, and if he were to die, his daughter, the princess. On the other side were the militant protesters, and whatever sections of the military backed Gaez, and most of Thailand’s north. They supported the prince, now in exile, to succeed the king. The lull would give both combatants time to regroup and consider their positions.

  At midday on Monday, Cavalier was waiting for Jacinta on a sofa in the hotel’s foyer when he heard the roar of motorbikes coming along Sukhumvit and then into the Soi. He walked to the entrance to see the two bikes arrive in the forecourt. At first, Cavalier wasn’t certain it was Jacinta. Her police helmet flat grill hid her face and hair. She wore tight black leather trousers tucked into high boots, and a black leather jacket. The only insignia that indicated she was some sort of cop was the ‘SIU’ in white letters on the jacket’s left breast pocket. She lifted the grill and removed her goggles.

  Cavalier shook hands with her and circled the bike. ‘A Harley-Davidson Roadster . . .’ he said appreciatively.

  ‘The 883,’ she said and then, with a nod and a flick of her hand, dismissed the outrider, who wore the standard cop gear, including a holstered hip gun. He grunted his bike to life and rode off.

  ‘You like it?’ she asked.

  ‘No. I love this machine!’ he said, running a hand over the sparkling alloy wheels.

  ‘It’s the bottom of the range. Do you ride?’

  ‘Used to. Couldn’t afford it now. They’d be forty thousand, maybe fifty thousand, new in Australia.’ Then he remembered his redundancy package. He held her gaze. ‘How did you get one?’

  Jacinta ignored his question, as she often did. ‘Please climb on behind me and hold on,’ she said, as she mounted the bike.

  ‘Take it easy, will you?’ he said, placing his arms around her thin waist. ‘I haven’t got a helmet.’

  ‘If it makes you feel better, please,’ she said, pushing her helmet at him. ‘If we crash, we are both going to Buddha. Hundreds die this way every week in my country.’

  ‘Oh, that’s comforting!’ he said. ‘You wear it.’

  ‘I thought you’d like speed.’

  ‘When I’m driving, yes.’

  She slipped on the goggles and helmet, and started the bike. They rolled down Soi 10, back to Sukhumvit. Jacinta turned left and moved at about fifty kilometres an hour for the first few hundred metres on a route that would take them west for six kilometres to the Grand Palace. The traffic was still light because of the restrictions. Cavalier looked over Jacinta’s shoulder to see the speedo climb to seventy, through to eighty and then ninety. She bent forward over the bike. Cavalier watched the road and, within a minute, its dividing line was a blur. Jacinta began to manoeuvre the bike between and past cars as the speed reached a hundred and twenty-five. She built up even more speed, shifting to top gear. She wriggled and wobbled the bike past more military vehicles and diplomats’ cars, just as there was an unexpected shower. The slippery road didn’t slow her down. Jacinta used the wet surface to slide and go even quicker.

  Cavalier heard a terrible woosh and crashing sound as they roared along Rama 1 under the expressway. It was from cars flashing overhead. He looked at the speedo. It was flickering over a hundred and fifty, which, on a bike, seemed about twice that speed as the Harley split the hot air. When she took on a military truck blocking their path, the bike veered right. It skidded for several seconds, close to the road’s edge. The Harley’s back wheel came within centimetres of huge truck wheels that dwarfed the bike. Jacinta managed to right the machine without losing more than thirty kilometres and then thrashed on. The rain stopped as quickly as it had come. Cavalier felt the bike straining and shaking as they reached a top speed of about a hundred and sixty kilometres per hour.

  Jacinta slowed the bike as they approached the high gold spires of the palace and the temple. A contingent of armed military personnel mingled with tourists in the forecourt. She parked the bike, locked it, and removed her helmet and goggles. Cavalier accompanied her to a temple adjoining the Grand Palace, which was not open to the public. He removed his running shoes, and she took some time unzipping the tops of her long boots. She waved a leg at him and he helped her remove both of them. They walked the steps to the ornate temple entrance, which had been constructed in a traditional, yet distinct, style.

  A muscular Cambodian monk wearing yellow robes greeted them. He was in his mid-thirties, with a shaved scalp. He and Jacinta embraced. She introduced the man, Ya t’ing, to Cavalier as her brother. They had met when training for the monkhood at the Chiang Mai monastery, nearly two decades earlier.

  Cavalier was struck by the monk’s gaze, or rather lack of it, from one eye, which he thought might be blind. They bowed and wai’d each other, with Cavalier bowing lower, which he did only with Buddhist monks. His wife had taught him this, demanding that he bow to no one. Ya t’ing made lingering eye contact with Cavalier.

  ‘You have been riding with my sister?’

  ‘Not riding,’ Cavalier said, ‘flying.’

  The monk gave a strange high-pitched whine of delight. ‘It is a test,’ he said, ‘and you passed!’

  ‘In what way are you siblings?’ Cavalier asked.

  ‘Soul siblings,’ the monk said, touching a gold stud in his ear, which, on close inspection, was a tiny Buddha. He took them into an antechamber and shut the door, putting a ‘do not disturb sign’ on it. They meditated. Cavalier had often practised meditation with his wife but not since their split five years earlier.

  ‘What is your sense of things?’ Jacinta asked the monk when they had finished a twenty-minute session.

  ‘You are both troubled by ghosts,’ he said. Cavalier did not react. But inside he was disturbed. He often felt the spirit of his daughter was with him. He wondered if that constituted something ghostly.

  ‘How will we resolve this?’ Jacinta asked. The monk stared away from them for a moment.

  ‘Only one of you can,’ Ya t’ing said softly.

  Cavalier could not help asking, ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘One of you will come to resolution. It will stand for both.’

  Cavalier frowned. ‘I don’t understand,’ he said.

  ‘Then perhaps this means your soul mate will be responsible,’ he said, which mystified and distracted Cavalier even more.

  ‘Soul mate?’ he said.

  ‘In past lives.’

  ‘In what way?’ Jacinta asked.

  ‘You were both warriors, many times; multiple lives.’

  Cavalier glanced at Jacinta. She nodded knowingly.

  ‘Now,’ the monk said, brightening, ‘let us pray for two minutes and then take coffee.’

  After the short prayer session, he led them to a side street a short walk from the temple. They entered a narrow wooden cafe, where only a few patrons were seated. They wai’d the small silver Buddha in a corner and placed a hundred baht in a bowl. They ordered coffee and chatted.

  ‘I hope you prayed for assistance on Monday night,’ Cavalier said to Jacinta. ‘I had a look at your opponent on the net.’

  ‘I did pray,’ Jacinta said, staring at him. ‘Can you read my mind?’

  The monk let go another whine. ‘I too prayed for this,’ he said.

  ‘That makes three of us,’ Cavalier said. ‘I still don’t understand why a woman with your frame is up against this bull.’

  ‘It is a novelty,’ the monk said, answering for her. ‘The crowds come to see a mature, most attractive, most popular ex-champion.’

  ‘Davina and Goliath?’

  ‘I know this Jewish biblical metaphor. It is like that, yes.’

  ‘I only fight this way once a year,’ Jacinta elaborated, ‘and it means much to me. I make very good money. I can send it to my mother and father and siblings in Isaan. Also to two sick aunts. I can contribute to my brother here, in his spiritual world. This is all most important to me.’

  �
�It’s the Thai way,’ Cavalier said, with a nod of understanding. ‘I saw this with my wife’s family; the same attitude of family first. It’s commendable.’

  ‘There are other factors,’ Jacinta said with a rueful grin. ‘My boss supports the fight program.’

  ‘He has a financial interest?’

  ‘In most things,’ the monk said.

  ‘There are extra rewards,’ Jacinta said.

  ‘Such as?’

  ‘You flew on it.’

  They sat in silence and watched a pair of tourists sitting nearby.

  ‘What do you feel about the Russian?’ Jacinta asked Cavalier.

  ‘He’s strong, but not smart or quick. Compared with you, he is lumbering; slow. You must use your speed and leap. Keep away from his right fist. Stay on his left side. He drops his left arm at the shoulder.’ He paused. ‘But, surely, with your great experience, you’ve studied him. You know this.’

  ‘Please continue. I am interested in your analysis.’

  Seeing that she really wanted to know what he thought, perhaps to see if she had missed anything despite her, no-doubt precise, preparation, Cavalier went on: ‘I’d say he has a long-term injury. It’s perhaps one of the few weaknesses in his frame. You should pummel it; pummel it hard. He will crack. He relies on strength. You have stamina. I only found two obvious physical weaknesses, which must become targets.’

  ‘What was the second?’ Jacinta asked.

  Cavalier tapped the bridge of his nose. ‘He’s had a few cracks and breaks on it. Surgery has not strengthened it. You must be like a raptor and find a third. Search for it with fists and heels and, especially, your magnificent elbows; exploit them all.’

  ‘Thank you,’ she said, with her first big smile for the day. ‘I am most grateful. But where did you learn such astute observation?’

  ‘I fought when I was young,’ he said. ‘But you saw me in my own home. I couldn’t fight my way out of a paper bag now!’

  Jacinta sipped her coffee, unconvinced. ‘You were ill after an operation,’ she said.

  ‘Minor.’

  ‘You had been hit across the back with a baseball bat.’

  ‘They may have killed me, if you hadn’t intervened.’

  Jacinta glanced away. ‘You didn’t seem to need me in Melbourne when Labasta was assassinated, or at the Myanmar border,’ she said and then locked eyes with him. ‘It took me a long time to understand the way you reacted when you saw the wound in Labasta’s head.’ It all caught Cavalier off guard. But he remained impassive and said nothing as she added, ‘I’ve been observing you closely; your past work; your interest in the beginning of the Iraq War; your proximity to that strange death of a drug runner in Tonga. Your AFP bosses and the police indicated you’d seen a lot of murders as a police reporter. You seemed almost nonchalant when you looked at Labasta.’

  Cavalier had not blinked during her comments. ‘Meaning?’ he asked, expressionless.

  ‘You know what I am thinking, ’ Jacinta said, looking away.

  ‘Tell me,’ he challenged her.

  ‘No.’

  ‘You think you know who killed Labasta,’ he said, ‘and I do.’

  ‘Who?’ she asked.

  ‘You are the crack shot,’ Cavalier said, opening his hands.

  ‘I’m told you’ve done wonderful sniper work with the SIU.’ Jacinta looked back at him with an almost demonic smile.

  The monk giggled at this exchange, seemingly not comprehending the import of their words.

  After a pause, she broke the tension and asked, ‘Now do you see the advantage of prayer to the Buddha?’

  Cavalier looked puzzled.

  ‘The Buddha has answered my prayers already!’ she said.

  He grinned at what he, at first, thought was a joke. But then, observing his two companions, he realised they both believed what she was saying. His own advice had been prompted from somewhere else; perhaps from a positive source they could not articulate but felt. He understood this side of the Thais, at least superficially, through having observed his ex-wife’s and her family’s unshakeable belief in the spirit world.

  ‘You don’t believe in this aspect of life,’ Jacinta said. ‘Or do you?’

  ‘I was once a sceptic,’ he admitted, ‘but keep an open mind.’

  ‘Because of your marriage to a Thai?’

  ‘That, and a personal experience I had once, that shook me up, you might say.’

  ‘In Thailand?’

  ‘No, London.’

  ‘What was it?’

  ‘I may tell you, one day,’ Cavalier said thinking back to a cottage next to the Thames River thirty years earlier. He had rented a room in which a previous tenant, a young woman, had cut her own throat and died slowly through a night. Things happened in that room that were inexplicable; it had affected him deeply and changed his attitude to the unknown.

  After they’d finished their coffees, Ya t’ing walked them back to the motorbike.

  ‘Hop on,’ Jacinta said to Cavalier. He hesitated and squinted over at a taxi pulling up. Tourists began to alight from it.

  ‘No,’ he said, shaking hands with both of them. ‘I think I’ll take a cab.’

  ‘I don’t believe you’re frightened . . .’ Jacinta probed.

  ‘No, but I won’t achieve what I want to if I’m injured, or dead.’

  *

  At that moment, across town at the Grand Millennium Hotel, Mendez, accompanied by four heavies, entered the suite of Russian boxer Yuri Goulov. The fighter was wearing a T-shirt, shorts and thongs, and sat impassively stroking his bulbous nose. His massive biceps and elephantine thighs were intimidating, and he made no move to get up for the visitor. With him was his manager, Peter Kritov, a former cage-fighting world champion in his forties, now gone to fat. He stood to greet the Mexicans. He offered the visitors vodka, which only Mendez accepted.

  Mendez sat opposite the Russians and snapped his fingers. One of his guards handed him a briefcase and the drug lord removed a chequebook.

  ‘How much is Yuri earning in this fight?’

  ‘Half-a-million dollars.’

  ‘Hmmm,’ Mendez said, lighting a cigar. Goulov protested in Russian, and Kritov asked the Mexican not to smoke. Mendez smirked and obliged.

  ‘I wish to give him five million dollars,’ he said, his pen hovering over the chequebook.

  Both the Russians leaned forward. Goulov, who had indicated he could not speak English, seemed to understand the amount mentioned. The Russians looked at each other.

  ‘What’s the catch?’ Kritov said, reaching for his vodka and trying to sound mildly interested.

  ‘Not really a “catch”,’ Mendez said, his smirk still evident. ‘You see, we simply want you to do what you have done to four—no, five—of your opponents.’

  ‘What?’ Kritov asked, more sharply.

  ‘Yuri has killed those opponents, has he not?’

  ‘None died in the ring!’ his manager snapped.

  ‘We appreciate that but, still, his punches put them in hospital and they died, what, within a week?’

  ‘Only three died from hits,’ Kritov corrected. ‘The other two . . .’

  ‘Died from choker holds, yes?’

  ‘Not in the ring!’

  ‘The holds were in the ring, yes,’ Mendez said slowly, ‘but the deaths occurred in the dressing-room within an hour after the fight.’

  Kritov blinked. He looked at Yuri. ‘What are you getting at?’ the manager asked.

  ‘I think you know what I’m saying,’ Mendez said, staring at both men before he began scribbling on a cheque. ‘I believe you call yourself Moscow M.T. Boxing Enterprises?’

  Kritov nodded. Mendez showed both the Russians the cheque. ‘I’ll have that couriered to you,’ he said to the manager, ‘the moment his opponent dies.’

  Mendez stood and his heavies moved close to him.

  ‘We can’t guarantee he can do that,’ Kritov said.

  ‘That’s all right,’ Mende
z said with a forced grin as he waved the cheque at them. ‘Then you will not receive this sweet bonus.’

  THE LULL

  The ceasefire between the two sides saw the capital eerily quiet during the afternoon, which was unusually hot even for Bangkok, at forty-five degrees Centigrade. A few locals ventured out, some with parasols. The army paraded along major streets but the soldiers were not challenged. The stillness was broken by a squad of military choppers, which whirred around the city, making their thundering, intimidating presence felt. No one knew if the temporary peace would be broken, but at dusk, Bangkok resumed as if nothing untoward had happened during the riots of the past few nights. The stalls were set up on the main roads as usual, the traffic was soon in gridlock and the Skytrain was running until an hour before the midnight curfew.

  Cavalier decided to dine at his favourite Bangkok place: the Mandarin Oriental Hotel at Bang Ray on the Chao Phraya River. His attachment to it was also sentimental. It was where he had proposed to his wife, and where he had taken his daughter on her birthday the last time he had seen her before she disappeared.

  En route in a taxi, he received a call from Jacinta.

  ‘What are you doing tonight?’

  ‘Staying out of trouble.’

  ‘I thought you would be with your cricket friends.’

  ‘Don’t fancy the bars. I’m dining at the Mandarin.’

  ‘Why the Mandarin?’

  ‘Nostalgic reasons. Although it’s never quite what it used to be.’

  ‘Alone?’

  ‘Yes. Do you want to join me?’

  ‘I must have an early night.’

  ‘Of course, with the fight so close. How do you feel?’

  ‘Good. Put all your travel money on me.’

  ‘I like your confidence.’

  ‘I am serious. You will win. The odds are still at more than ten to one for me to win at the moment. But those odds will change.’

  ‘How do you know?’