by Knox, Tom
“Like this. Imagine you trepan some caveman, because he has fits—epileptiform seizures—and you want to get rid of the demons. But when you do the surgery, it turns out, not only do you get rid of the demons, you turn him into a superior fighter, a warrior, a logical brute. Why? Because, quite by accident, you have chopped out some of the higher evolved structures of the frontal cortex, the neural networks responsible for guilt and conscience, the part of the brain that evolved in the Paleolithic, the Great Leap Forward, as Julia so brilliantly confirms.”
The traffic surged, a beggar stared, a ladyboy wiggled her tongue at Jake.
“Ah. Jesus.”
“Exactly. Fucking exactly. So you discover that by drilling brains you can make real nasty, ruthless, guilt-free killers. Like feral gorillas but clever, oui? An inestimable evolutionary advantage.” He vigorously extinguished his eighth cigarette and looked across the table. “So that’s why we see so many trepanations. All over the world. These Stone Age primitives began to do it on purpose, to make themselves more warlike—but maybe these societies then collapsed because they killed too well. They collapsed into tribal violence, ritualized torture, executions, mass suicides, even. And this is what we see in Lozère, and the legends of the Black Khmer on the Plain of Jars. Violence and trepanation and tragedy. Hand in hand in hand.”
Julia interrupted.
“But of course the crucial point is that the Chinese decided to repeat the Stone Age trepanations. To alter the neocortex.”
Barnier accepted his next whiskey, slugged it, and lit yet another Krung Thep cigarette; then he said, “Yes. Using Ghislaine’s ideas and knowledge as a theoretical base—the same ideas you have unearthed, Julia—the Chinese must have established a way of chopping the possibility of conscience and guilt out of the neocortex. And then, when they finally felt ready, they must have started their grisly experiments on the brain, in Phnom Penh, on live subjects.”
Jake said, “But these experiments went wrong. Didn’t they? They turned people into zombies. Like Chemda’s grandmother.”
“Indeed,” said Barnier, “it seems so. Looking back, I can see why. If a guilt module exists it must be delicately interwoven with the frontal cortex and the limbic system, and the hippocampus. You might get lucky and remove most of it, or you might just leave a drooling lobotomy victim. It’s not a question of just neatly spooning a few cubic cc’s of conscience from the top of your head. And their surgery was, I am guessing, desperately crude. This was Cambodia in the seventies. So they lobotomized these poor bastards and turned them into alcoholics, rapists, psychotics. Not that the Commies especially cared: they were feeling their way, these were early experiments. Broken eggs for the omelette, eh?” He smiled, and frowned, and gazed at a Muslim woman in a black shroud with a metal nose mask over her face, like a Norman warrior. The Muslim quarter of Bangkok apparently began just north of the brothels and ladyboys.
Now Barnier continued: “My guess is that they must have cut into the wider inhibitory systems by mistake, dopamine reward systems, who knows. But they ended up creating retards or helpless monsters. Like that guy who tried to ravish Chemda, what was his name again?”
“Ponlok. His name was Ponlok.”
“So this explains it.” Julia shook her head. “This also explains why people volunteered for the experiments.”
“Uh huh. Yes, it does, does it not? The real committed Marxists volunteered. They wanted to be perfected, like Cathars, they wanted to be stain-free Communists, to have their guilty bourgeois minds cleaned and purified.” He spat smoke. “A quite magnificent dramatic irony, worthy of Flaubert. Given that it happened in maybe the most revolting regime in the world—because if anyone should feel guilt it is the Khmer Rouge.”
Jake ignored his beer and asked, “So how did you end up here? What happened to you in the seventies?”
Barnier sucked on his cigarette. “Like I told you. First they took us to China, and that was bad, dark, unsettling. And then we went to Kampuchea and that was just … Aii, that was just motherfucking horrible. As soon as we landed in Phnom Penh I could smell it! You could smell the desolation and fear. And there was the silence. Like a dead city, like Venice in a very bad dream. No cars. No laughter. No one talking. Just whispers. Whispers and heat and decay. And those eerie, eerie streets. My God, those empty streets.” Barnier downed another drink, and ordered yet another.
Jake said, “But what actually happened? What did you do there, in Cambodia?”
“Same as China. Zero. I was ignored, because by then they knew they really wanted guys like Ghislaine, neurologists and historians and shrinks and the like. These important guys would be whisked away in jeeps, while I would stay in my creepy hotel, staring at the Tonle Sap, thinking about death. And one day I lost it, I just decided: enough. So I sneaked out of the hotel and I slipped my KR handler and I found a bicycle in one of those empty streets and I picked it up and rode out into the countryside.” He shook his head. “And I saw for myself. Out there, in the countryside. Oh my God. I saw the truth, Jake. I saw with my own eyes the fucking reality of their perfect Marxist revolution. Everyone was wearing black, black pajamas, building these stupid irrigation canals, in the sun, carrying mud in baskets, barefoot. Sliding around in the mud. Skeletal. I saw people pulling plows. People. Not animals, people.” He gazed, furious, at nothing. He continued. “They weren’t even robots, they were beasts, beasts of burden. Silent serfs. No one spoke. I cycled around and stared and listened and I heard nothing. Just people working in the mud. And it was then I realized: this place was a prison, just one big prison. An entire country turned into a concentration camp, a whole nation doing forced labor.” He coughed angry smoke. “That did it for me. I rode back, I was trembling all the way. Almost sick in the street. Pretty soon I started asking questions and I got one or two people to talk, and they told me about the killings, the many killings. People were being killed for anything, for wearing glasses, for planting their own potatoes, for speaking a foreign language, for loving their children too much, for writing, for talking, for dancing, for laughing—you really could get killed for laughing in Cambodia under the KR, you could get your head smashed against a tree for being happy, because laughter and happiness were capitalist, and soon after I just quit. They let me go, all they did was tell me not to talk about the conferences, and I didn’t. Other people got more stringent restrictions: they were told to lie low for their whole careers, afterward. So no one would guess what the Communists were doing. Everyone had to conceal their discoveries and sacrifice themselves, to the greater project—revolutionary Marxism.”
Julia said, “And that’s why Ghislaine went back to Lozère. That’s why he reacted so weirdly when I found the skulls.”
Barnier agreed, vehemently: “In his later years, he must’ve been fucking conflicted, like your friend Annika said. There he was, once a brilliant young scientist, with a brilliant new theory, based on the skulls and the bones of Lozère, the cave paintings, and Prunières; and yet he was told to trash it, to forget it, to destroy his essays, to kill his own career. And then along you come and you find some more skulls, and he is reminded of all this, the waste of his life and his theories.”
“He was told to do this, to stay silent,” Jake asked, “because it’s what the Cambodians wanted?”
“Ah no.” Barnier shook his head. “No no no. Not the Cambodians. The Chinese, of course. The Chinese were in charge of the whole thing. That’s what I always understood, this experiment was always a Chinese operation, they had the money and ambition and the idea, but they used the little Cambodians, their lunatic Maoist acolytes, the craziest regime in the world, as useful lieutenants. The Chinks were farming it out to the Khmer, outsourcing, franchising.”
“Why?” Jake asked.
“This was ’76. China was in turmoil. Mao was dying. The extreme Maoists needed somewhere to work undisturbed, and Cambodia was their death laboratory, a fucking socialist playpen.”
A beggar with no legs drag
ged himself past Tony Roma’s pizza outlet.
Jake asked, “And what happened to you then? Why are you here? Why were you in Abkhazia? Why have you been traveling around the world, trying to work out the past?”
Barnier exhaled smoke, his face sallow and his brow darkened. It seemed that he’d grown sick of himself.
“Because I have my own searing guilt at being involved in any of this. I remember ’79, when the Khmer Rouge fell, I remember watching my TV in Lyon and seeing it: all my worst suspicions confirmed, the whole damn country had devoured itself, inside out, two million dead. A quarter of the nation. The nation that cut off its own legs, gouged out its own eyes. And that’s when I renounced it, that’s when I was born again—a capitalist. A simple capitalist and proud of it.” He was glaring at Jake defiantly. “I moved to Hong Kong, then LA, and then Singapore, and I used my guilty brain and became a day trader, a money broker. I wanted to be as un Communist as possible, and it did the trick. I made my money and I fucked myself a lot of poontang, and, you know what, if I have to die now then to hell with it, kill me, kill me, for I have sinned. But at least I’m not a cunting Communist, not anymore.”
Barnier drank the residue of his whiskey in one toss. “And in the last couple of years I have used my money to try to find out what really happened in China, and Cambodia. I went to Angkor, ’cause I knew the KR were interested in Angkor. I went to Sukhumi. But none of it really made sense, until now. Until lovely Miss Kerrigan told me this theory, and you told me your story. I suppose I should be thankful to you both. Explaining just how evil my life has been.” He laughed. Bitterly.
A tuk-tuk driver swerved past, swigging from a Leo beer can. Jake looked at his phone, ritualistically. But Chemda was not going to call. She was gone. Maybe for good. The phone was silent.
Jake leaned and poured himself a glass of the Mekong whiskey. It was harsh and sour and necessary. He drank it fast, poured himself another. The mosquitoes were biting, the women in burqas waddled past the whores in their hot pants.
Julia was talking.
“I have one final query, Marcel.”
“Eh?”
“You said to that guy in the lab, in Abkhazia, ‘The Chinese took it much further.’”
The Frenchman was gazing nervously down the crowded street in a reverie of half-hidden fear. He alerted himself, and turned.
“Aii. Yes. Yes. That’s right. I did.”
The American woman leaned forward, serious. “How do you know this? How do you know they carried on?”
Barnier had maybe his sixtieth cigarette of the evening poised, unlit, between his fingers. He cracked open a Zippo lighter and flamed the tobacco. Then he plumed a blue maribou feather of smoke and said: “About a year ago I got an e-mail, out of nowhere, from my old colleague Colin Fishwick. My old comrade in arms from Democratic Kampuchea. Fishwick!”
“The neurologist!” Julia said. “The other survivor, from the photo.”
“The only one alive, apart from me. We e-mailed about the killings. The way we were all being … knocked off? One by one. He wanted to know what I reckoned, how dangerous it was. I said I was damn terrified and I was looking into the mystery and I was going to flee if it all got too close. Fishwick said the killer was probably coming for him, too, but he was so hidden away he felt safe. For the moment.”
“OK.”
“The e-mail exchange ended soon after that,” Barnier added. “But Fishwick let one thing slip. I asked what he was doing. And then he confessed. He said he had been recruited again by the Chinese. He’d been enticed back—big money—to develop things. He hinted it was the same stuff he had done thirty years ago. Whatever that was—I hadn’t guessed at the time. Now we know. Anyway, he said he was still working at a lab in Yunnan, in a very obscure, very remote place. Balagezong, quite near Zhongdian. It’s in the lower Himalayas. Hard by Tibet.”
Jake stared across the dirty table.
“You say he is … still working?”
“Yep.” Barnier nostriled smoke. “Right now, in this remote corner of China, Balagezong—it seems they’re still wielding the scalpel, they are still chopping out guilt and conscience. They are still doing the operation. The only difference is…” He paused and gazed warily around, then added: “This time, apparently, according to Fishwick, this time they’ve got it right. And that—”
He stopped abruptly. His face was a cold-sweated mask.
35
The Frenchman was standing.
“I just saw Chemda! Over there. By the kathoey bar.” He hesitated. “Unless—!”
Jake was already running down bustling Sukhumvit, barging past the white men and their miniature girlfriends; but he felt a surprisingly strong hand pull him back.
Barnier’s whiskey breath was hot in his face.
“Think—this cannot be your girlfriend—think—it must be the killer—why would Chemda be skulking around. Jake?”
The good sense was chilling. But Jake didn’t care: he had to take the risk. It might be her. He wrestled himself free of Barnier.
“I’m going to look. Where was she, exactly?”
Barnier puffed his exasperation.
“Idiot. There. There. Fucking madness. She was there. I am going back to my apartment, lock myself in—get my bags—and then I am fucking gone.”
He turned and paced away, joining the crowds, another older white guy among the younger Asian girls and the he shes. Jake found Julia at his side.
“Let me help.”
She helped, but it was swiftly obvious the search was fruitless. They searched up and down Soi 2, and Soi 4, they ran past Beer Garden and Foodland Supermarket, they pushed past the freelance hookers and the Saudi wives and the blind karaoke singers warbling their terrible songs.
Nothing.
“Maybe,” Julia suggested, “maybe Barnier imagined it. Probably. He is drunk.”
“He is delusional.” Jake spat his disappointment. “Fucking drunken lunatic. Ah, fuck … Fuck it.” He rubbed the tiredness and despair into his face with weary hands. “Come on. I don’t believe he saw anything. Let’s go to my hotel. See if Chemda left a message.”
This was, of course, pathetically hopeful, as he knew: but he had no hopes left.
The American woman was silent as they paced down hot, busy, nocturnal Soi Nana.
“Jake, I’m sorry. For what happened in that bar. Chemda.”
“It’s OK. I believe you. And I also know the killer just can’t be Chemda.”
They were at the corner of Soi 6. A whore in a microskirt was bowing to a small shrine, a spirit house, erected in front of the Shakerz Coyote Tavern.
“So who is it?”
“A clone?” Jake sighed. “Who knows. If they can cut your conscience out of your head, what can’t they do? Clone you? Multiply you? Your guess is better than mine.”
Julia put a hand on his tensed, muscled, angry shoulder.
“We’ll find her.”
“Yeah. Of course we will. Somewhere in Asia. Where shall we start looking? India?”
They walked quickly down Soi 6, past the Sukhumvit Grand with its saluting guards, where a snicket of a side road led under papaya trees. It was a cloistered spot in the kineticism of the city: two Thai kids were sitting on stools playing guitar, softly, like troubadours in the moonlight. Another spirit house lurked in the very darkest corner.
Julia said, “What about her family?”
“Speak to them? Sure. That’s the obvious solution, isn’t it? I even tried. But I don’t think they trust me, they already think I kidnapped her, whisked her away into danger. Can I blame them—”
“But she was already in trouble when you met her, in Laos, right?”
“Yes, but…” Jake sighed. “Since I met her she’s got into a lot more trouble. And I wonder. Maybe it is my fault? Blundering into situations I don’t understand? That’s the thing with Cambodia, Thailand, all these countries—you think you have grasped a situation, then it turns out it was entirely the oppos
ite, it all meant something different.” He gazed at the lobby of his hotel, the Sukhumvit Crown. Desolate. “Jesus, what are we gonna do?”
As if it was an answer, he felt a buzzing in his pocket.
His phone, blinking an American cell number. Tyrone. Tyrone.
He eagerly clicked ACCEPT.
“Ty?”
“Hey. You OK? Any news of Chemda?”
“So you heard. You got my message?”
“Yes, but—”
“We don’t know where she is, Ty. Just gone. I’ve been trying to ring you. Do you know anything? Just … desperate.”
“I’m trying to tell you. Look…” Tyrone’s drawl hinted at something. A revelation.
“What, Ty? What?”
The silence was sharp. Then Tyrone answered: “I have good and bad news. I think I know where Chemda is.”
“Where? Jesus! Is she OK?”
“She’s OK, probably, at the moment. Probably.”
The signal from Phnom Penh faded out. Jake sprinted up the steps to get better reception, waving at Julia as he did: wait here, this is important, sorry.
Tyrone was back on the line: “I did some investigating for you.”
“Like how?”
“I had a brainstorm when I got your message. Figured her dynasty must know something. I just went to the Sovirom house, the compound, and I did it—I confronted her mother. And she fessed up. She fessed up and broke down. They’ve had a kidnap note.”
“Who is it? The Lao?”
Jake stared at the dingy hotel parking lot. Julia was sitting on the steps, staring at the darkness. The boys had stopped guitaring songs. A rat was nosing between garbage bags, a fat and brazen tropical rat.
“Chemda is in China.” Tyrone sighed. “Yunnan. Right up by the Tibetan border, a place called—”
“Balagezong!”
An intake of breath.
“Yep. Jesus, Jake. Balagezong. How do you know that?”
Jake hastily explained—the conversation with Barnier, the terrible brain surgeries. Somewhere in Phnom Penh, Tyrone swore his surprise.
