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,
‘Chase them!’ Cortez ordered as the two figures could be seen scurrying along platform 9. ‘Take them!’
Two of the Mexicans propped, fired and missed. Their bullets bounced off the train as the spies stayed close to it. Two of the armed men ran to the end of platform 11. By the time they reached the station exit, the Indonesian couple had hopped on a motorcycle and roared off. The Mexicans fired wildly, narrowly missing people walking home from a nearby nightclub, homeless people lying in streets and startled prostitutes doing late-night deals with customers near the station entrance.
‘Do you get them?’ Cortez demanded.
‘No,’ one of his deputies said, ‘there were too many people. They were on motorcycles.’
Cortez looked fit to explode. His men gathered around him like a football team with their coach during a break. They hung their heads, not wishing to make eye contact.
‘This means,’ he said, pausing to control himself, ‘somebody is aware of our shipment. You and the others will guard the bullion around the clock. I mean sleep with it!’ He paused to wipe his weeping good eye and temper his outburst. ‘I will see if we can limit the number of stops on the trip.’