THE CAPTIVE
In the very next carriage, Cavalier’s daughter Pon, wearing just a bra and pants, was on her knees. She had her head over the toilet in the state cabin as she gripped the sides of the bowl and threw up.
A few metres away in the bathroom, thirty-eight-year-old Jose Cortez, wearing a white suit, was having trouble adjusting a cravat. He seemed oblivious of her plight as he cursed under his breath.
‘I want you to perform at your best tonight,’ he said. ‘You will have an audience of maybe a hundred people in the piano bar; the biggest you have played before in a year.’
‘I cannot,’ she whispered hoarsely. ‘Can’t you see I am ill?’
‘My dear, it is your condition … bulimia …’
‘No! It is the drugs you give me. You sedate me. You abuse me!’
‘I keep you alive.’
‘I’d rather be dead!’
‘So you show me with your pathetic slashed wrists.’
‘I hate you! Always have, always will!’
‘That’s not what you say when I fuck you.’
‘Rape me!’ she corrected him. ‘You rape me!’
Cortez tore off the troublesome cravat, pushed into the toilet and backhanded Pon across the face, sending her sprawling to the floor. Blood sprang from the corner of her mouth. He held her by the throat, causing her to begin choking. Cortez’s face was demonic. He’d lost an eye in a Florida gunfight with FBI agents and his appearance was made more frightening by his tartan eyepatch slipping and exposing a white glass substitute, which bulged from the socket. His one good eye was opaque like that of a fish. He eased his grip. Pon coughed and used all her strength to release his hold.
‘Now look, you stupid bitch!’ he hissed. ‘I promise I will murder your father if you don’t do as I say. If you attempt suicide again, he is a dead man.’
Pon refrained from responding. She would never admit it to Cortez, but the only thing that was now keeping her alive was the concern that the Mexican would kill Cavalier.
‘You know he is a professional like me?’ he asked staring so hard that his one ‘good’ eye flared red, went pale again and let go a trickle of fluid.
Pon shook her head.
‘You know nothing about him,’ Cortez said. ‘You think he is a simple journalist. It is a cover for his killing, sanctioned by the CIA.’
Pon broke down. Cortez pushed her head over the bowl and flushed the toilet. She struggled to avoid being wet.
‘Clean yourself up and prepare for the show.’
Pon struggled on all fours into the shower. Cortez turned it on and left her slumped on the floor and sobbing under the cascading water. He returned to the mirror, adjusted his eyepatch and had a second try at his troublesome cravat.
*
Cavalier was unable to rest, although the sound of heated argument and worse had abated. He locked the door to his suite as the train rattled west for three and a half hours towards Kanchanaburi, where it would stop for the night. In the first hour he took out five tubes containing high-powered rifle parts from his backpack and cleaned them. He then removed his old Glock-17 handgun, put six bullets in it and placed it back in the cavity of the chair’s right arm.
He refused to come out for the first dinner sitting of the trip in the dining cars. Instead, he accepted a soup entrée, which a waiter brought to his door. After devouring the food, accompanied by a glass of Chablis, he took out a detailed description of the train, studied it and placed it back in his pack. At 8.15 p.m. he climbed into the chair and began to wheel down the corridor towards the observation car at the end of the train, passing slowly through carriage 30, watched by four armed security guards, and another four Mexicans with concealed weapons under sleeveless leather vests.
Cavalier noted the door to the suite where he believed Cortez and Pon were. He pushed beyond it to the two carriages harbouring the gold and manned by most of the cartel bodyguard. He took some time easing through the doors, looking at their locks and wondering if he could cut off the guard from the rest of the train. He did not linger too long, aware from his glasses and movement behind him that he was being followed by other passengers and two of the Mexicans.
There were a half a dozen people sitting on the observation car’s seats watching the passing scenery of part jungle, part rural west Thailand with its myriad villages. The end of the train was also open and three suited travellers were having an after-dinner drink. He positioned himself next to the seats in the car’s centre and ordered a scotch and ice, keeping up his pretence of being both nearly blind and almost deaf. Cavalier looked out on the passing vista with his back at forty-five degrees to the door leading to the observation car.
A half-hour later three Mexicans came out of carriage 30 followed by Cortez, his eyepatch slightly askew as ever, his cravat on straight and his violin in his right hand. Pon was behind him in a long white dress, head down, and ‘assisted’ by two Mexicans either side of her. Despite efforts to use make-up to mask her injuries, one eye was black and slightly closed. The corner of her mouth was red and swollen.
They strode through the observation lounge. Cortez brushed the wheelchair with his elbow, cursed under his breath and glared at Cavalier as if it were his fault for being in the way. For a split second Cortez’s eye flashed red, as if an oven door had been opened. It was the look of a psychopath, a person who may well have enjoyed every one of his scores of murders. He moved on into the next car.
Cavalier touched his glasses, not quite believing what his reflective lenses were showing him. The woman with Cortez looked like Pon, or a bedraggled, bug-eyed and bruised version of her. His heart raced. He gripped the right arm of his chair and had to stop himself from taking out his handgun and killing his intended victim.
Overriding his rage in the moment was a rational thought. He would be gunned down, and his daughter could be killed in the crossfire. Instead, he kept looking out at the passing parade until the Mexican contingent had a quick drink and moved back down the carriages to the piano bar and lounge.
Cavalier swung his wheelchair around, just as Huloton scurried into the car.
‘Mr Blenkiron, sir,’ he shouted into Cavalier’s ear, ‘would you care to listen to a wonderful violin and piano recital?’
‘Who is giving it?’ Cavalier said, attempting to conceal his shortness of breath and anger.
‘Arh! A special performer from Bolivia and his Eurasian partner.’
‘No, I’d rather stay here,’ Cavalier said off-handedly. ‘Never had much time for classical music. New Orleans jazz is my thing.’
‘Are you all right, sir?’ Huloton said solicitously. ‘You look, if you will permit me, somewhat pale.’
‘I’m okay,’ Cavalier said, keeping his slight drawl and trying to calm down. ‘Thank you for your concern. I have these “turns” at times.’ He tapped his chest. ‘Heartburn sometimes; erratic beat others. But don’t worry, I take pills for it.’
Cavalier returned to his suite. He could not stop thinking about his daughter and this caused him to change his mind. Although still emotional to the point of tears of anger, he felt he had to see her again.