THE SCREENING
Melody Smith’s American DEA agents staked out the Riverside Condo for twenty hours a day and noted Cavalier’s movements. They arranged video surveillance from a local Thai detective operating in the hours 2 a.m. to 6 a.m. from a van in the car park. Smith had become increasingly nervous about Cavalier’s reluctance to lay out his plans. She did not think for a moment that he would debunk to Brazil with his first tranche payment. Yet she was concerned that she was losing control of the overall operation to apprehend or, under extreme circumstances, liquidate Jose Cortez. Her bosses in Washington were beginning to harass her about the project, in response to her stalling on information while waiting for Cavalier to tell her more.
At 5.30 p.m. on 23 April the sun was beginning its lazy descent into the mountains and was obscured by an early wet-season torrential downpour. A taxi van pulled up at the condo, among a never-ending stream of tuktuks, cars, red cars, taxis and trucks entering and leaving the condo grounds. In a flurry of movement in the rain that reduced visibility to a few metres, a wheelchair-bound elderly man in a rainhood and coat was being helped into the van. A backpack and suitcase were placed inside it, and the wheelchair was lifted mechanically into the vehicle’s rear. The agents monitoring the condo’s entrances took no notice. Cavalier was more than able-bodied. They had all seen him since early in the morning of the previous day when he had been on a long run and had worked out at the Holiday Inn gym. Late morning, he bought the papers and had coffee at the Chang cafe. At about 7 p.m. he had strolled past the market to a restaurant specialising in duck. An agent doing an overly diligent job had parked himself in a noodle cafe opposite and used a powerful long-range camera to pick up Cavalier’s order. He diligently recorded it as ‘pat pak muan and moo—mixed fried vegetables and pork; water, no alcohol’.
Cavalier had seemed in no hurry. The agents noted that he stopped to talk to two people, both Thais, on the way back to his apartment. His Harley, a plastic cover over it, was sitting all that day and the next in its usual spot in the bike park in front of the condo facing the Lamphun Road. There was nothing out of the ordinary, the agents reported to a now worried Melody Smith. She tried to contact Cavalier. He wasn’t responding to phone calls, texts or emails, except to send her a text at one point saying: ‘The project has begun. Stand by for more information.’
This only upset and frustrated Smith even more. She had returned to Bangkok to brief her team without anything new to report. They had to cool their heels at hotels and rented apartments awaiting directives and monitoring the Mexicans, who had dispersed in small groups to apartments on the upmarket Soi 24 off Sukhumvit. Smith and her entourage thought this might signal that they were going to split up in an attempt to leave Thailand by several routes with sections of the bullion.
Video footage of everyone leaving the condo was sent to Smith’s computer and she and other DEA agents spent hours poring over images fast-forwarding out of the building. No Caucasians looked like him. Blown-up stills of males run against his photo proved not to be Cavalier. Only a few people could not be seen clearly in the video, either from headgear or because of the rain, or both. One was the man in the wheel-chair, who had been helped out into the taxi van.
On the afternoon of the day after Cavalier left the condo, Smith became suspicious that the man in the chair might be him. Inquiries were made at the condo at 5 p.m.
Agent 3815 Ralph Bozer reported to her in an email: ‘The condo manager told me that a Frenchman, Monsieur Laurent Blanc, had inherited the wheelchair since an American named Ted Baines had recently died and left it to him, among other personal effects. We have Baines’ lawyer’s number but his firm is closed for the weekend. I asked the condo manager to describe Blanc. He sounded like an elderly version of Cavalier.’
‘It must be him,’ Smith said in a phone call to Bozer, ‘but what the heck is he doing in a wheelchair, and where was he going?’
*
At 5 p.m. on 24 April, Cavalier paused in his wheelchair under the decorated stained-glass windows at the entrance to platform 11 at Bangkok’s Hua Lamphong station where the Express was parked. He had spent the night in a first-class cabin on the train from Chiang Mai after sending his backpack on by courier to Kanchanaburi, the train’s first stop on the way to Singapore. He wheeled himself to a queue of passengers in the special lounge area next to the platform under the ancient, European-style, steel-arched roof. One by one or couple by couple, and with as much politeness as possible, passengers were called to an office and questioned by the train manager, forty-five-year old Cyril Huloton, and Jacinta, who both sat behind a plain wooden desk.
The guests were asked to sit down. Huloton, being the manager and official captain of the train for the journey, was in charge. Huloton was short and balding. He sported a grey goatee beard, de rigueur for Frenchmen of his vintage who had lived well enough to develop the beginnings of a second chin, which they wished to cover up. He continually stroked his modest moustache. Jacinta, wearing a light-grey pants suit and white chiffon shirt, looked suitably official, despite her role of escorting the Mexican contingent. Her hair was piled high, which both exposed her magnificent neck and bone structure, and made her look businesslike. Huloton was all busy apology and sweet smiles. He was uncomfortable in a role of mild interrogator and he gushed questions while doing his best not to offend.
‘Monsieur, Madame,’ he said to an elderly American couple, Dick Arnold Bowles the Third and his wife Ruby, ‘we see you have come from New York. May I ask what your business is?’
‘It sure ain’t terrorism!’ the big man said with a hearty laugh. He sucked on a Cuban cigar. The strong odour pervaded the office.
‘I am sure, Monsieur,’ Huloton said wringing his hands, ‘this is just routine. By law now we must be sure of the passengers’ bona fides.’
‘I was in construction, Sir, and might I say we appreciate you doing this. We don’t want any undesirables on board either!’ He laughed again, and had trouble keeping his eyes off the stunning, although today understated, Jacinta. He kept looking to her, hoping she would ask a question. Jacinta didn’t have to do any public relations. She would not waste her breath on anyone who was not of interest.
Finally, she asked: ‘Have you had anything to do with Golden Eagle Constructions?’
Bowles stiffened.
‘Not if I could help it!’ he said with vehemence. ‘They competed with me in Texas. They’re a bad, very bad Mexican outfit. They employed really cheap labour from over the border, with the workers being promised permanent residency in the United States. There are rumours that all the corporation’s base capital was generated in the illegal drugs trade.’
‘Have you taken action against them?’
‘We were always in the courts over something with that crooked mob,’ he grumbled. ‘They should not be allowed to operate in the States. I hope Donald Trump wins the election and builds that goddam wall he promised. I really do!’
Jacinta made a note and thanked the couple, who went away muttering to each other.
‘I think you upset Monsieur,’ Huloton whispered.
‘He was quite hostile about Golden Eagle,’ Jacinta said. ‘So?’
‘They are the ultimate paymasters for Cortez and his men.’
Jacinta scrutinised everyone’s passport and paid attention for the first time to a solid, urbane and tanned Australian of about 60 years, who put down his profession as ‘Western Australian grazier’. He wore a large bush hat that had seen better days and one gold ring on his left hand that seemed far too small for his finger. He had massive forearms and hands, gnarled from decades on the land. He and his thin, regal-looking wife Annie of the same age sat impassively as Jacinta asked, ‘Have you ever been associated with the military?’
‘No. I missed the Vietnam War. Too young.’
‘Sir, do you use a weapon in your work?’
‘All people on the land have to, from time to time.’
‘What sort of weapon do you use?’
‘I have a twelve-gauge shotgun and a handgun. They are both licensed.’
‘Do you have those weapons with you now?’
‘No. They are under lock and key back at our homestead.’
‘You have to ask me that too,’ Annie said, her voice cultured and pleasant. ‘I am a better shot than my husband. Whenever an animal has to be put down, it is my duty.’
‘Er,’ Huloton said, ‘I take it your gun is locked away also?’
‘No, it is encased under our bed, fully loaded.’
‘Under your bed?’
‘In Carnarvon, Western Australia.’
‘Oh, pardon.’
Huloton wiped his brow during this exchange and apologised again, this time for the humidity. Jacinta kept her eyes on ‘Mr Dempster’ and looked down at his gait. He had a slight limp as he walked out of the room.
The next guests in—Dr Topapan Makanathan and her husband Marc—had both Huloton and Jacinta jumping to their feet and bowing deeply. She was a sparkling, lively-looking woman in her early fifties, with streaks of red and blue in her spiky hair more fitting to a teenager. A strong waft of a dated face powder, with a fruit and lavender fragrance, floated in with her.
When asked once by an interviewer why she used such an old-fashioned scent, Makanathan had replied: ‘I have to go into sewers and toilets to retrieve body parts in my work. My lovely lavender blocks out the odours better than any perfume.’
Her face was all keen, sharp intelligence intermingled with infectious grins. Her sixty-five-year-old husband was a quiet, fuzzy-haired string bean with glasses.
‘This is a mere formality, you understand, my good doctors,’ Huloton said with another obsequious bow. Looking at Topapan, he added, ‘Everyone in Thailand knows who you are.’
‘What a good cover for a terrorist,’ she said with a laugh, causing Huloton to grin inanely for longer than the comment merited.
‘We are honoured to have you on board and hope you have a most pleasant trip,’ he said, and motioned for attendants to take the famous lady and her husband to their suite in carriage 16.
Huloton ran a pen through their names, leant across to Jacinta and remarked: ‘That’s two we don’t have to worry about.’
‘It still leaves one hundred and thirty or so to watch,’ Jacinta replied, ‘some closely.’