Cavalier, wearing the rain jacket that hid his gun in a zip pocket, saw Pin off. He then boarded 092 with his backpack. Making sure he wasn’t seen, he replaced the recorder in the same position near the bar. He wandered back up to the village, bought some fruit and sat down at a bench to eat it.

Cavalier took pictures of the mountain vista across the river where a light mist was already being devoured by the sun. The early morning rain had stopped. The day promised to be good for the tourists, who would not have to squint through the rain with their cameras and phones. Cavalier watched the tour group straggle down the hill from the hotel.

He returned to the boat and had to endure various questions about his wife departing the tour. Cavalier was embarrassed and had to smile through the quizzing. He was alert to the gang coming onboard, minus Dubois, who was already on the cargo boat.

Leni, Hollos, Castro and Amaz carried cartons of beer and began their daily consumption ritual. They were all wearing the same blue denim they’d had on the day before. It seemed to Cavalier like some sort of uniform. The more they drank, the more Cavalier relaxed. He reasoned they would not be in a state to confront him, or even kill him, if they were inebriated by lunchtime. Yet he was alert. Amaz was fidgety. She consumed less than the other three. He noticed that she glanced his way at least twice.

There was also Dubois, out of sight on the cargo boat. Cavalier worried about him more than the others. Dubois would be the one who killed without compunction, but no doubt for good money. On the rare occasion Cavalier had been close or looked into Dubois’ face, he noted something he recognised well. Dubois wasn’t as big as Hollos, but his look had an indestructability about it. It was prison-hard. He was a survivor from the worst incarceration places in the world, which said much about him.

Cavalier looked in the mirror and recognised some of Dubois in his own visage. Not so much the toughness, but the survivor in him. They were both lone wolf operatives. Dubois seemed out of place with the other four, and uncomfortable.

*

Cavalier read a book as the boat chugged along the river. It stopped at a village where he joined Geoffreys and the other tourists as they walked inland to inspect a school building. They left Dubois and the alcoholics, except Amaz, onboard the two boats.

Geoffreys was raising funds to help build schools in these remote areas. This altruistic enterprise was his life, after his long ‘servitude’, as he called it, in advertising in Singapore. He wanted to help educate the children of these isolated areas, to give them some chance in life.