Cavalier and Dr Na took off in fine weather, and were surprised by the amount of military air traffic as they floated along on the three-hour trip to Bangkok. Cavalier excused himself and slept for the first two hours. He was exhausted after the exertions of the past twenty-four hours.
When he awoke, Dr Na asked him if he’d had a wild night.
‘Why? Do I look fatigued?’
‘Very much so.’
Cavalier stretched, examined a map, the instruments and the terrain three thousand metres below.
‘The women of Chiang Mai can be very alluring?’ Dr Na said, by way of a prompt.
‘Do you partake, Doctor?’
‘No—my wife would kill me!’ he said with a chortle. ‘I suppose I ask because it gives me vicarious insight.
I work very hard as a doctor; don’t get much time to play.’ He paused. ‘And, in any case, seeing a thousand AIDS victims is very off-putting.’
They flew on for another few minutes before Cavalier asked, ‘How were your days in Chiang Mai? Busy?’
‘Very! I was doing a bit of locum work at the local trauma hospital.’
‘Oh? Traffic accidents?’
‘Not only. We had a few accidents on farms. Two people were shot by soldiers in a riot. There are some people still risking attending demonstrations after the curfew time. They are asking for trouble.’
‘Any motorbike deaths? I always hear about crashes on the roads here.’
‘Oh yes, of course. About twenty,’ Dr Na said ruefully. ‘Bike fatalities and terrible injuries go without saying in Thailand.’
‘I did see a bad accident last night,’ Cavalier said, looking ahead and sounding casual. ‘A semitrailer rear-ended one of those military-style Humvees.’
‘Yes, four people from that—all Mexicans. Very nasty people too.’
‘No bad injuries, I hope?’
‘Don’t really know. One had facial lacerations. He was already missing an eye from another accident, I gather. But they were all whisked away by the police before we could examine them.’ After a long pause, Dr Na said, with a thoughtful squint, ‘There was another most unusual situation, which I had to assist the coroner with.’
Cavalier waited.
The doctor glanced at him. ‘Decapitations,’ he said.
‘How awful!’
‘They were grotesque, and . . . well, strange. We’ve had a few drug crazies go mad with axes and swords. They are dreadful, because the victims are often hacked up in the process.’ He paused to listen to a radio message from traffic control at Bangkok. Then he resumed, ‘The two headless victims I saw had been dealt with almost surgically, so clean were the cuts.’ He looked at Cavalier again. ‘Cutting off human heads is not easy.’
Cavalier winced.
Dr Na added, ‘The coroner reckons that either a really experienced surgeon did it or . . . or it was done by a guillotine . . .’
‘Really?’
Dr Na nodded. He added, almost with admiration: ‘They were such clean severances! But who would do such a thing? It has the coroner and the police baffled. We know some crazies have samurais. One was stolen from a Japanese couple living in Chiang Mai. There is now a big community of elderly Japanese who come here to die, you know, to see out their lives. It’s cheaper and the climate is better than where they come from. Japanese people from that age group all seem to have some sort of medieval sword in their homes. The police are checking that community. But I doubt it could have been any one of them. The Japanese are very good citizens.’
Cavalier wanted to ask several questions but checked himself. Dr Na had been most helpful and generous, but he didn’t want to give him any clues about his own investigation. He felt he could trust no one after what happened when he spoke to Mamasan Mali at Foxy Lady.
They slipped on, buffeted by turbulence, and with several stomach-churning drops and dips. But the flight was nothing like the terror and danger of the previous trip. Cavalier had time to think through his Bangkok plans. He felt certain that the police, through Jacinta, would keep tabs on him and they were sure to be able to trace him easily enough. He decided to stay at the Galleria 10 again. It would make his activities easier.
‘And what do you plan to do in Bangkok?’ Dr Na asked, as if reading his thoughts.
‘Not much,’ Cavalier answered carelessly. ‘I might watch the boxing match on TV. I’m told the junta has opened the sports channel for it. A big, powerful farang against a “woman”. A famous ex-Thai champion who had a sex change. Sounds like a mismatch!’
‘For the man, yes,’ Dr Na said with a snigger. ‘I am betting he will be beaten!’
Cavalier waited for an explanation.
‘The odds are too good to miss!’ the doctor said. ‘I managed fifteen to one.’
‘That’s remarkable.’
‘It is, but there has been a big plunge on the transsexual since I put my bet on. You could still get ten to one.’
‘Did you put much on her?’
‘Twenty thousand baht. Don’t tell my wife!’ Dr Na said with a grin.
*
They arrived at Bangkok’s outskirts midmorning. It was hotter than in Chiang Mai. On the tollway into the city, there was little traffic except for military vehicles.
‘You’d think we had been invaded,’ Dr Na chuckled as he gunned his hired Audi past two lumbering tanks. Twenty minutes later, and only ten kilometres from the centre, the traffic came to a standstill. It took another ninety minutes to reach Galleria 10. Bangkok, with its heat and glacially moving traffic, made Cavalier feel claustrophobic. His phone rang. ‘Welcome back!’ said Jacinta. ‘Did you get what you wanted on your trip?’
‘Yes, I did, nearly. I wanted to make a century at Prem. Fell two short.’
‘I don’t know what that means. I was talking about your investigation.’
‘We should meet.’
‘It’ll be difficult for a few days.’
‘Your fight is on Tuesday night?’
‘I have Monday and Tuesday off work, but I am busy.’
‘I think we should meet as soon as possible. I’ll fit in with you.’
Jacinta was silent for a few moments. ‘I’ll text or phone you,’ she said and rang off.
‘You know her?!’ Dr Na said in awe.
Cavalier explained, without giving specifics, that they had worked together on a project.
‘Are you going to the fight?’ Dr Na asked excitedly.
‘I hadn’t planned to.’
‘She is your friend?!’
‘Work acquaintance.’
‘You must come to see her! I shall try to buy tickets.’
Once checked into his hotel, Cavalier read online previews of the Muay Thai fights, on Tuesday at the Lumpinee Stadium in the city’s south. The special ‘unofficial Muay Thai World Championship’ would start at 8 p.m., due to the curfew. The Russian world champion, Yuri Ivanovitch Goulov, weighing in at a hundred kilograms of ‘rippling muscle’, would be challenged by ‘a former Thai Champ’, The Flying Angel—Jacinta—who was said to be just fifty-nine kilograms.
Cavalier watched an internet clip of the Russian, in which the brute disposed of an American challenger in three rounds. His arms were huge and he punched with force, but his footwork was slow for a Muay Thai champion. Cavalier replayed the fight and then found another video of the Russian, in an illegal cage brawl with a Ukrainian, whom he poleaxed with a fearsome right cross. That match went for four rounds of a scheduled twelve-round bout. He replayed that video too and took notes.
Over a light lunch in the hotel, Cavalier read website articles on the coup’s progress, and was disturbed to learn that several local and foreign journalists had been picked up and interrogated. Some had been detained by the junta. A French correspondent had been deported; a female English TV reporter had been given notice she had to leave. Other stories mentioned that Gaez now had ‘at least 30,000 soldiers ready to take up arms for him if he decided to depose the Junta’. But these reports were unconfirmed and isolated; Cavalier thought the language in the articles smacked of propaganda. Perhaps, he mused, Gaez was helping his negotiating position in the current stand-off with the junta.
Cavalier walked to Sukhumvit, where crowds were gathering near Asok for the day’s demonstration. This would mean confrontation. Soldiers, rifles at the ready, were marching next to armed vehicles and water cannons.
‘What’s going on?’ he asked a cop a few paces away.
‘The military is making sure what happened last night is not repeated,’ he said. ‘You’ll have to stay off the streets.’
Cavalier had read about battles in the streets off Sukhumvit the night before. There had been shooting but reporting of it had been limited by the junta’s strict rules.
A shot was fired and everyone, including the cop, ducked. Cavalier thought it had come from a footbridge across Sukhumvit, to his left. Soldiers propped and fired back. Demonstrators ran for cover. The cop moved to the cover of a roadside pillar and waved his gun at Cavalier, yelling, ‘Get out of here, fast!’
Cavalier hurried down Soi 10 to his hotel, where Japanese tourists were filing onto a bus, only to have the hotel’s security guards tell them to get off again. There would be no sightseeing tour today. He retrieved his binoculars and camera from his hotel room and hustled down to the street again. He reached the entrance to Chuvit Garden, running next to Soi 10, and walked through it to Sukhumvit. Water cannons were letting loose torrents that spreadeagled the crowd. Those who couldn’t avoid the water, which hit them with considerable force, were left concussed on the road. Resistance at ground level evaporated but foolhardy rebels on the footbridge over Sukhumvit were using rifles to fire at the soldiers and police. Soon they were cornered in the middle of the bridge and forced to surrender. Cavalier used his phone to take photographs and video of the incident. People began running past him through Chuvit Garden, causing him to retreat once more to the sanctuary of the hotel.
He decided against sending the footage to Driscoll, knowing that she would use it immediately. That would only cause the junta to track him down and stop his activity, one way or another. He calculated that to complete his mission, he needed at least one more week in Bangkok, and much would depend on what he could learn from the enigmatic Jacinta. The city was in near shutdown. He would be limited in where he could go and whom he could see. For now, he rested in his hotel room and checked emails. He received a late-afternoon call from Jacinta.
‘Tomorrow I visit the temple: Wat Phra Kaeo at the Grand Palace,’ she said. ‘Would you come with me? We can find time to chat.’
‘What about the riots?’
‘They may cease tomorrow. There is talk of a truce. In any case, I shall bring my motorbike, and maybe an escort.’
‘I’ll come,’ Cavalier said. ‘Thank you. Are you going for anything special?’
‘I must pray for guidance over the fight.’
‘You believe the Buddha will help?’
‘He always does.’
Why, Cavalier wondered, was she almost solicitous towards him? He dined alone in his room, and idly watched TV. He tried to read the Iraq War book and fell asleep at about 10 p.m. He awoke twice to the sound of muffled gunfire and explosions.