‘She’s been ordered to stop the investigation. Both the Thai and Malaysian governments do not want anything about what happened on the train to be public, especially the terrorist attack.’

Cavalier was reflective before he said, ‘I don’t mind doing a report on the smugglers, but nothing else.’

‘You could write an article for one of the weekend colour magazines—you know, a feature on the tour. But best not to announce yourself as a journalist. Just be a tourist. Best to take your ex-wife. It will avoid suspicion. The tourists, we are informed, are mainly couples.’

‘I’m not sure she would want to come. She’d never take time off from Chiang Rai hospital.’

‘Have you another partner to take? Someone you could trust.’

Cavalier was contemplative.

‘You’d only have to note the gang’s movements and so on,’ Wombat added. ‘Where they load the stuff on, where they get it off. Detail. Once we have that, we’ll send in operatives to do the rest.’

They sat in silence for a few moments. Cavalier weighed up the assignment.

‘There is another local connection,’ Wombat said. ‘We believe a Tasmanian is financing the Mekong drug operation. He works also for Conquer on a freelance basis. His name is Neil Farquar. Have you heard of him?’

PART TWO: SPY

PART TWO

SPY

11 ASSIGNMENT LAOS

11

ASSIGNMENT LAOS

Cavalier was surprised that Pin was enthusiastic about going on the Mekong River Cruise. She hadn’t taken a vacation in more than twenty years but after the recent traumas over Pon, she believed she might have a breakdown if she didn’t take time off from her stressful hospital regimen.

‘For once, your timing is right, Victor,’ Pin told him.

They agreed it would be on a platonic basis and that Cavalier would pay for the trip.

Cavalier and Pin were picked up by a minibus at his riverside condo and joined several other tourists. The tour was ‘Mekong Adventures’, run by an ex-pat New Zealander, Colin Geoffreys. He was a good-looking and personable 45-year-old who had spent twenty years in advertising before a sea change saw him running boat tours on the Mekong. Wombat’s intelligence was that Geoffreys was not aware that Farquar and his team of five were drug runners. And if he was aware, he turned a blind eye. His salary was more than he had earned as a senior advertising executive, and this might explain his ‘hear no evil, see no evil’ attitude.

Two buses collected all the tourists. Cavalier was soon on alert when he realised that the gang he would be spying on were in the second vehicle.

*

The convoy stopped at a plantation area fifty kilometres short of Chiang Rai. Farquar and the other five moved off to talk to farmers, while the rest of the group was shown a black rice crop.