UNMASKED
Once inside and locked in, Cavalier entered the adjoining suite, showered and changed into a light white suit and purple bow tie. He shifted any possible future incriminating evidence into the presidential suite, judging and hoping that a security or any other break-in would be in the Frenchman’s state cabin, and not the American’s presidential suite.
A note under the door from a steward assigned him to the New Orleans dining car, and a particular seat number. That left him an hour and half to kill before eating. He wandered down to the piano bar in the lounge car, the train’s social epicentre, with a book on Napoleon by a French biographer. There were five couples. The men wore dinner suits; the women were all in evening dress. He began to order a double malt whisky but checked himself. He may have been one of the few on board ordering this drink, and he had already devoured a few as American Edward Blenkiron.
Cavalier asked for a rum and orange juice and sat on a high white chair at a new marble-topped bar that had its initiation on this trip. He was joined by the Australian psychiatrist Hinkley and her son Cowboy. Hinkley was attracted to Cavalier is his guise as Claude Garriaud, and was happy to learn she would be sitting with him over dinner. She began asking him about his background and Paris.
‘I’m taking Cowboy there in a few months,’ she said. Cowboy was sitting, his short legs dangling, between Hinkley and Cavalier. He suddenly threw a hard punch with his left hand that hit Cavalier on his right shoulder. Cavalier pretended it had not hurt. Hinkley smiled sheepishly.
‘Sorry about that,’ she said without admonishing Cowboy, ‘he thinks you’re chatting me up.’
‘Pardon?’ Cavalier asked with a frown, ‘I don’t know this expression.’
‘Um, he thinks you are flirting with me.’
‘Oh,’ Cavalier chuckled. He smiled at the stern-looking Cowboy and added, ‘Mais, I am not, young man!’
‘Are you retired?’ Hinkley asked.
‘No, no, I am a teacher, looking for work at the moment.’
Out of the corner of his eye, Cavalier could see Cowboy lining up another punch. This time Cavalier swung his right shoulder back. Cowboy threw his fist and missed by a few centimetres. He overbalanced, clipped his face on the bar’s marble edge and collapsed to the floor. Hinkley and Cavalier lifted him to his feet. He was not badly hurt from the hit and fall, despite blood trickling from the corner of his mouth. Hinkley whisked him off to a bathroom with a steward in attendance offering first aid.
Cavalier left the bar and settled into a chair in a corner. He began reading his book but was distracted by the histrionics of a Singaporean pianist, different from the Thai who had performed the day before in place of Pon. His speciality was ragtime jazz, with a few variations. He kicked his chair out as if he were a latter-day Elton John, and climaxed a long bracket of songs with a more than passable version of ‘Rhapsody in blue’. Cavalier returned to his reading for another half-hour.
The numbers in the bar built and the pianist returned for another bracket, beginning with a not-so-good version of ‘Dance me to the end of love’. The second sitting of diners drinking before the meal numbered about forty when Jacinta waltzed in wearing a short powder-blue dress and showing an impressive cleavage. The open back revealed she did not need a bra. Her high heels, adventurous for the sometimes jolting walk along the corridors, accentuated her ultra-slender legs and high calves, and pushed her height to above most of the others in the bar. Her jet-black hair, which until now had been arranged in a businesslike bob on top, was loose and touching her shoulders. She was accompanied by Azelaporn, his bull neck seeming more bulbous in an ill-fitting dark dinner suit and black bow tie. He was wearing his trademark mirror sunglasses, and looked agitated. They propped at the bar and whispered in Thai to each other.
‘I’ve had Garriaud’s compartment searched,’ he said.
‘And?’
‘We found nothing incriminating.’
‘So, he is not under suspicion?’
‘No, he still is.’
‘Why don’t you trust him?’
‘He is a farang, and French.’
‘That’s racist!’
‘So what if I am?’ Azelaporn nodded his head sharply. ‘He’s in the corner, reading. You must do your duty.’
‘My duty? This is not for king and country.’
‘I am ordering you to fuck him,’ he hissed.
Jacinta shook her head and was about to leave him when he gripped her arm. ‘You took this job knowing it might not be all peaches and cream. You must know that if you screw men they blab. You’ll learn all we want to know.’
‘I refuse to have you dictate to me with whom I should be intimate. That is an order too far.’
‘You fancy him, don’t you?’ Azelaporn sneered, ‘I noticed him watching you when we walked in.’ His tone softened. ‘He fancies you. Every man in this bar fancies you. You know that.’
‘I am not one of your bimbo Chinese courtesans or bar girls! You know that!’
‘Of course, I do. But Jacinta, it is not as if I ever asked you to do this before.’ He glanced over her shoulder at Cavalier. ‘Look, as I told you, if you do this I promise you a nice extra bonus.’
Jacinta stood and towered over Azelaporn.
‘Go and play with your whores!’ she said with a fierce glare. Azelaporn rubbed his face. His bullying had never worked when dealing with her. He had never pushed her too hard. He was intimidated whenever he shoved her to a brink and she answered back. Azelaporn had witnessed many times her demolition of men twice her weight in the Muay Thai boxing ring, and the ferocity of her attacks on all opponents. He turned and marched out of the bar.
Jacinta asked Cavalier if she could join him. He bounced up and in halting, yet confident Franglais ordered her a glass of Champagne.
‘My boss suspects you and the Indonesians,’ she said quietly in Thai. ‘He wants me to be close to you; as close as I can.’
‘I am sure that is not necessary.’
‘I agree,’ she said, holding up her glass to him, ‘but I may have to do what he wants.’ She sipped the Champagne and leaned in close. ‘He has had your cabin searched.’
Cavalier could not quite hide his concern. His forehead stretched. He was not always at ease masquerading as other people and this was another vulnerable moment.
‘My cabin?’ he asked.
Jacinta nodded.
Cavalier was relieved. He had moved all his notes and his backpack of rifle pieces into the presidential suite.
‘Hmm,’ he mumbled, ‘did he find anything?’
‘Apparently not. But he is set against you for some reason.’
‘Why?’
‘Perhaps because you are a good-looking Frenchman. He hates farang.’ She looked away and then locked eyes on him. ‘He wants me to take action.’
‘What “action” exactly?’
‘Sleep with you. What do you think of that?’
‘Might be the beginning of a beautiful friendship, or the end of one.’
‘He suspects you of something,’ she said.
‘Of what, I wonder?’
Jacinta gestured helplessly. ‘He is a supreme ass-hole,’ she said softly, ‘a dangerous man. He is whimsical and paranoid.’
‘What really made him suspicious about me?’
‘Well,’ she said slowly, and began counting on her fingers, ‘one: you are travelling alone; two: you are not in the same age bracket as most of the retirees; three: you look very fit, four: an out-of-work teacher could not afford the trip, and five …’
‘What do you think?’
‘I think you are not who you purport to be,’ Jacinta said with a cunning look. ‘You can drop your pretence with me. It is an impressive image, but it did not take me long to work it out.’
‘What gave it away? My removing the beard?’
She shook her head. ‘Your mannerisms.’
Cavalier half-smiled. It made him nervous once more, although he had trust in her not to disclose his identity.
‘Also the way you walk,’ she added after some thought. ‘You still have that slight limp from your Achilles problem.’ She sipped her drink. ‘With those things in mind, I began to study your face, your body, your hand movements, your manner. You are not a great actor. A good one maybe, with your French gestures and accent, but not a great one.’
‘Third-rate, I’d say.’
‘No one can cover up everything.’
Cavalier felt vulnerable. He sipped his drink and changed the subject: ‘What do you think about the Indonesians?’
Jacinta shrugged. ‘They could have been just nosey. They might be doing some industrial espionage to copy the train’s design. Then again, they had maps. They could simply be tourists.’
‘Unlikely,’ Cavalier said. ‘Gregory had them under surveillance in Chiang Mai.’
‘For what?’
‘Terrorism. They had been plotting something in Australia. What if they learnt of the bullion?’
‘ISIS and its affiliates in the south—the Malaysians, the Philippines and Indonesians—would love to put their bloody paws on such booty.’ Jacinta stared. ‘The oil situation in Syria and Iraq is an issue. The fields are being bombed out of existence. If they haven’t got it, they can’t sell it. ISIS is on the way to defeat and running out of cash.’
‘Now you have me concerned,’ she said. ‘What would they be up to? Destroying the train? Stealing the bullion?’
Cavalier sipped his drink as the pianist played ‘As time goes by’.
‘Suppose you were running an ISIS affiliate and your brothers in the Middle East put pressure on you to aid the cause.’
‘They are already robbing banks.’
‘Right. ISIS is also stepping up its hostage-taking. They could obtain a reasonable haul on the Express …’ He paused. ‘Imagine these two Indonesians were doing the reconnoitring for an attack.’