SWEET & SOUR MELODY
Melody Smith agreed to Cavalier’s terms with one caveat: that he committed to involving her team at some point in his schemes.
‘You’ll need back-up,’ she said in a face-to-face meeting, sitting on a sofa in the lounge of her Holiday Inn suite. ‘You can’t go it totally alone.’ She switched on her phone recorder. ‘Must have this for legal purposes.’ She asked for his bank details.
Cavalier didn’t react, but he was uncomfortable. He took a notepad from his valise, wrote the details on a page and handed it to her, saying, ‘As soon as I know the first tranche is in the account, I’ll implement the plan.’
‘Are you going to say how the Mexicans are leaving Thailand?’
‘Have you considered the options?’ Cavalier asked.
‘We figured they’d use a vehicle convoy to a port somewhere. Bangkok would seem the most obvious point.’ She looked at Cavalier. He remained impassive. ‘They couldn’t do it by plane unless they left the gold, or used a squad of transporters to drive it out.’
‘I’ll let you know in a week, maybe two. It’s going to take that long for me to put something in place.’
‘I have thirty agents ready. We need to know from a logistical point of view.’
‘Your aim is to eliminate Cortez, right?’
Smith pointed to the phone, indicating her remarks would be for the record. ‘The priority is to apprehend him and his men. Given his record of extreme violence, we must be prepared for casualties in any encounter.’
‘Meaning you will take him and them dead or alive?’
‘No, that is Wild West talk. We must work within the letter of the current law.’
‘Ok, I think I understand,’ Cavalier said, nodding and pointing at the phone, ‘and you wish to grab the gold.’
‘“Grab” is not a word we’d use,’ Smith said with manufactured indignation.
‘Secure the gold then?’
‘That contraband has been gained from illegal drug deals, people trafficking, prostitution, arms deals and even gambling. Some of the drugs end up in the United States, which comes under DEA jurisdiction.’
‘Even though all the cartel’s deals are done outside the US, in this case?’
‘The role of the DEA is to bust the big illegal cartels, if they have anything to do with the US, period. The Mendez cartel is still the biggest player in the US. If we break it and round up key operatives within it, then we are doing our job.’
Smith sounded as if she were making an Agency political broadcast. Cavalier had no doubt the recording would be used to impress DEA lawyers and DEA chiefs, or even politicians at a future Congressional hearing.
‘Let me say this,’ he said, picking up on the political theme as he leaned forward and spoke closer to her phone. ‘Once my plan is in place, I’ll let you know what is happening, even if you are not needed for the prime objective.’
They chatted for another half-hour, Smith attempting to lead Cavalier into talking about his achievements, which was to reassure both her and her superiors of his capacities, especially with the funds that would be invested in him. He divulged nothing beyond his travels as a journalist.
Frustrated, she asked him straight out: ‘Did you assassinate Leonardo Mendez?’
‘Why do you ask?’ he replied with a calm expression.
‘We were informed on good authority.’
‘By whom? Where?’
‘I can’t disclose that.’
‘You have to be careful of rumours.’
‘The Thai police say it was an incredibly well planned hit. They think the Mexicans know who did it. Cortez, we hear, believes it was an Australian posing as a Swede, who stayed at a hotel looking into the Bangkok’s Nana Plaza where Mendez was assassinated.’
‘What evidence is there?’
‘Cortez learnt it from the former Thai Police Chief Aind Azelaporn, whom he has hired for protection in Thailand, and, we assume, to deliver him out of the country safely.’
‘And how did you learn this?’
‘From contacts in the Thai police,’ Smith said. Scrutinising him, she asked: ‘Did you, or did you not, eliminate Leonardo Mendez?’
‘No,’ he said, staring her down. She stopped the recording.
‘I was kinda hoping you’d say “yes”. But you would say “no”, wouldn’t you?’
‘Sorry to disappoint. I’m just a journalist. Have been for more than thirty-five years.’
‘Nice cover,’ she said, with the only unforced smile he’d seen from her. ‘Just like Clark Kent, mild-mannered reporter for the Daily Planet.’ Cavalier still gave nothing away. ‘Can you give me some idea of your plan?’
‘I’ll divulge more when the first tranche is in the account,’ Cavalier said, ‘in addition to the seventy thousand expenses, as agreed.’
‘You must itemise all expenses,’ Smith said, ‘and collect receipts.’
She took a small plastic pack from her bag and handed it to him.
‘You’ll need this,’ she said, ‘for verifying you have completed your project. Its nickname is—excuse the expression—KK, for Killing Kit. It has been perfected ever since we destroyed Bin Laden in Pakistan.’
Cavalier opened the pack.
‘Has a very new feel about it,’ he said, ‘fresh out of the oven.’ He wrinkled his nose. ‘What’s that smell? It’s like formal-dehyde.’
Smith smiled. ‘The first of its kind the DEA has had,’ she said, ‘and yes, the plastic cover has a special cleaning preservative. Makes it fingerprint-proof.’
‘How?’
‘You’d have to grip it very hard with your fingers to leave a print.’
‘It has three syringes of different colours, two swabs, a small camera about half the size of a mobile phone and two pairs of surgical gloves,’ Smith said. ‘The swabs are for wiping the inside of the target’s mouth for DNA verification. The yellow syringe is a tranquiliser; the red syringe is for a blood sample; and the blue syringe is for a lethal injection.’ She took a breath. ‘We’d prefer you acquired both a mouth swab and blood sample, but either will do. The camera is fairly new. If you press the button marked “1” you make the shot on the screen, just like a mobile phone camera. The innovation is button 2. If you press that from about one metre above the body, it will photograph the entire body of a person up to two hundred centimetres, regardless of whether it is the frame or not. We need photos of the face, profile and body to complete the ID.’
Cavalier exhaled audibly. ‘That is going to take a few minutes,’ he said with a grimace.
‘It must be done,’ Smith said. ‘We prefer you used the blue syringe—’
‘For the kill?’
‘It is preferable to a bullet. If you shoot him in the head, it may make recognition difficult.’ She paused and eyeballed him. ‘The person who liquidated Leonardo Mendez gave new meaning to the term. I’m told face recognition was not possible. He did not have one.’
Cavalier smiled thinly.
She added coldly: ‘Also gives new meaning to the expression, “saving face”.’
Smith kept staring, always assessing. If she wasn’t probing with questions, her eyes were forever exploring, looking for the ‘give’, the tiny mannerism or twitch that would expose a weakness, or the truth.
‘May not be able to reach that close …’ Cavalier muttered.
‘You’ll have to, for full recog and photos.’
‘Hmm,’ he said, ‘I’ll work it out.’
‘As soon as you can, email us the photo of your success and guard the swab and/or blood sample.’ Smith was enjoying Cavalier’s uncertainty. ‘You have used a syringe, I take it?’
He nodded.
‘You find a blood vessel in the crook of the arm—’ Smith began.
‘Not the easiest place,’ Cavalier interjected. He was imagining himself in the dark somewhere, ‘but it will all right on the night.’
*
At just before midnight, he felt like a bike ride to Wat Phra, the temple sixteen hundred and fifty metres up at the top of the rugged mountain Doi Suthep. He liked to wai the Buddha at the 24-metre-tall gold-plated monument, one of Thailand’s holiest sites. At this late hour, there would be fewer worshippers in attendance. The space, speed, and lack of traffic on the exhilarating ride always allowed him to think his way through issues. He wore a black jacket, helmet and night goggles and placed his Glock 17 in an inside pocket.
Just as he was driving off he noticed he was nearly out of petrol, so he turned into the Caltex station opposite his condo. One of six attendants filled his tank and Cavalier was about to leave when two farang bikers slipped in, next to two other bowsers. He was adjusting his helmet when he realised the new arrivals were the Russians who had chased him a few nights earlier. Cavalier’s first instinct was to ride back across the road and into the safety of his condo. But if they spotted him, they would know where he lived. He turned his back on them and strode into the Tops store to buy a bottle of water. When he came out after a few minutes, one of the Russians pointed at him. The two Russians conferred as Cavalier strode across the petrol station forecourt. They seemed to have made up their minds that they had recognised him when he jumped on his Harley. One began running at him, knife in hand. Cavalier kick-started his bike and burst past the yelling Russian. Cavalier glanced back to see them giving chase. He hugged the river and ran two red lights in a scramble to reach the highway running north to the base of the mountain. The Russians nearly collided with a truck in their scramble to catch him. On the earlier pursuit, Cavalier had done everything to avoid confrontation so soon after he had manhandled their companion. This was different. The threat was not going away unless he took action. He began the mountain climb with the Russians only seventy or eighty metres behind. Cavalier put his foot down as he wound the bike up the steep slope, leaving his pursuers two hundred and soon three hundred metres behind. The road had tight turns and sharp inclines. It had him cornering at forty-five degrees, past a dog lying perilously close to the road’s edge, and two young farang on foot. He took a risk on a blind turn, speeding past a taxi red car, which struggled through the gears. Its driver hugged the low left-hand railing that formed a flimsy barrier to a cliff edge leading to an abyss of heavy, tangled undergrowth.
The Harley’s lights bounced over a large billboard picture of Thailand’s king and queen and a dirt road leading to a small temple. Cavalier slowed the bike near a bend in the road where he had stopped months earlier to do some shooting practice with his Glock 17 in the rainforest. He then braked hard, skidded off the road and scrambled behind a two-metre-high rock.
Cavalier waited, heart pounding. He could hear the whine of the two bikes as they strained up the mountain. He moved from behind the rock, and took aim at the bikes as they drew close. He fired twice. The first shot hit the front tyre of the lead bike, bursting it and throwing the driver onto the road. The second shot smashed into the back tyre of the second bike, shattering it, and causing the second rider to slam into the rock. Both the Russians lay prone in the road, holding their helmets, for more than a minute.
Cavalier walked to his bike, drove it fifty metres down the road, parked it in front of the clearing in front of the royals’ billboard and waited to see the result of his ambush. Both men got to their feet uncertainly. They looked about but could see no one. From their nervous words to each other, Cavalier believed they were concerned they would be killed. They gingerly removed their helmets and dragged their broken bikes clear of the road.
Cavalier mounted his Harley and drove slowly to within ten metres of the stricken men. They backed away. Cavalier removed his gun and aimed it at them.
‘I won’t direct bullets at your bikes next time,’ he said. ‘If you chase me again, it will be your last rides.’
With that, he revved the bike and drove off down the mountain. He would have to wait until another night to wai the Golden Buddha at mountain top.