by Andy Maslen
“That’s sounds perfect.”
Back at his hotel, Gabriel went online and booked a first-class trip to San Antonio for two days’ time. His time in Cambodia was almost at an end, and he was itching to get back to Texas and confront Clark Orton. He felt he was close to the end of his quest now. Only one thing worried him, and when he considered the potential fallout, his stomach squirmed with anxiety. So far, he had killed two CIA agents. Two active CIA agents. That could attract the sort of attention he felt sure Don would call, “unwelcome, Old Sport.” Deep in his gut he felt sure that an operation so twisted that its planners were prepared to kill sixty children to try out some new biological weapon would not be officially sanctioned. It could only be one of the side projects that ambitious or, frankly, crazy senior agents occasionally tried to pull off. In his work for Don and before, in the SAS, there had been stories of agents essentially freelancing or privatising themselves in order to pursue private goals, from assassinations to regime change in Africa. Maybe if he could pinpoint the mastermind behind it, he could change the odds in his favour and avoid becoming another framed portrait on the “Most Wanted” wall in Langley. Only time would tell.
Ticket booked, he was able to relax a little. He reserved a table at Indochine, engaging the host at the other end of the phone in a brief but pleasant conversation in French about which table might offer a degree of privacy.
He undressed, removed the bandage, and rolled it into a neat cylinder, then took a shower. The doctor at the hospital had done a good job with the stitches; a little blood welled out of the cut, turning the water streaming down his arm pink, but that was all. As he shaved, wiping the mirror clear from time to time, he observed with interest the bruises on his torso and arms. The fight with Christie had been, what did Thomas Hobbes say about life? “Nasty, brutish and short”? Yes, that just about summed it up.
He wanted to make an effort for his dinner with Lina. He hadn’t packed a lot of clothes for the trip, but he had included one outfit should he need to dress to impress. He laid it out on his bed now. A navy linen suit from Armani, white shirt from Turnbull and Asser, with French cuffs closed with jade cufflinks in the shape of owls, and a pair of tan, plaited leather sandals by Ferragamo. He tucked a white pocket square into the jacket and checked his Breitling Chronomaster. Time to go.
50
Dinner Conversation
“BONSOIR, monsieur. Welcome to Indochine. You have made a reservation?”
The statuesque hostess smiled at Gabriel from behind her mahogany and brass lectern, on which rested a large burgundy leather covered book with that evening’s reservations.
“Yes. For eight o’clock.”
“Your name, sir?”
“Fox.”
“Very good, Mister Fox. Your guest has not arrived yet, but I can show you to your table if you like?”
“Yes, please.”
He followed the hostess, who wore a simple black skirt and white blouse, through the restaurant to a corner table. All the other tables were full, and the room buzzed with conversation. Perfect, Gabriel thought as he took the chair she’d pulled out for him. He ordered a dry martini from the waitress who appeared at his elbow a few moments later. When it arrived, he took a sip of the ice-cold spirit and swirled it round his mouth for a second before swallowing. As well as the flavours of gin and vermouth, Gabriel detected a faint herbal aroma. He took a while to place it, but when he did, he smiled. It was Thai basil, and it gave that most western of cocktails a distinctively southeast Asian twist.
While he waited for Lina, he remembered his promise to the dead at the killing field to find a monastery whose monks could collect the skulls. Perhaps Lina would know of one. He observed the clientele of the French restaurant with interest. Whereas fifty years earlier they would have been exclusively French or American, now they appeared to hail from all over the world. He heard the ubiquitous languages of the new global super-rich – Russian and Mandarin – but also Dutch, German, Swedish and even Swahili. Disunited in language, they may have been, but they were united in wealth. It filled the air with the smell of cigars, expensive perfume and the sorts of leathers that required either hunters or exotic farms to provide.
He had just tuned into a conversation between two African businessmen when he saw Lina weaving her way between the tables. No hostess to shepherd her through the dining room, he noticed. Perhaps that particular service is only offered to foreigners, he thought. She drew a lot of attention as she strode through the restaurant. She’d piled her hair on top of her head in an artful arrangement, leaving a couple of jet-black strands to curl down around the nape of her neck. And she wore a short, black cocktail dress above high-heeled shoes in black patent. Her jewellery – drop-earrings, necklace and bracelet on her right wrist – glittered in the candlelight: pale-blue stones Gabriel assumed were sapphires.
He stood to greet her as she reached the table, kissing her on both cheeks. She seized his face in both hands and kissed him a third time, full on the mouth, drawing an appreciative cheer from the African businessmen who had avidly watched Lina’s arrival.
“You look fantastic!” Gabriel said after they’d sat down, not facing each other but on adjacent sides of the table. “Beautiful.”
She smiled, and brushed a strand of hair away from her face.
“Thank you. And you look very handsome. What’s that you’re drinking, a martini?”
“Yes, with Thai basil. Taste it.”
He proffered the almost-empty glass, and Lina took a sip, leaving a red blush of lipstick on the rim.
“Mmm,” she said, “delicious. I think I’ll join you.”
Gabriel signalled the waitress who’d brought him the drink, and ordered two more.
Drinks in hand, Gabriel and Lina chinked glasses.
“Your health,” he said.
“À ta santé. So, you batted my question aside when you phoned before. What happened with Flowers of Hope and Marie-Louise Hubert?”
Grateful for the corner table and the hubbub of a full restaurant, Gabriel explained, in a low voice, what had happened since they’d last seen each other. Lina made no comment as he retold the story of his meeting with Cray/Christie, the breakneck ride to Flowers of Hope and his subsequent masquerade at the hospital where he had sent Hubert to meet her maker on a surging tide of medical-grade heroin.
When he finished, Lina didn’t immediately start asking questions. He admired her for that. She reminded him of Britta, who also liked to think before speaking. A dying art, in Gabriel’s opinion.
“Nobody here would publish a story casting doubt on her,” she eventually said. “One, she was very careful to cultivate her public image. Two, she made sure she shared her wealth around with the people running Cambodia.”
“Is there nothing you can do?”
Lina shrugged.
“What would be the point? She’s dead and I suspect without her, Flowers of Hope will wither away. The real question is what’s going to happen to the children? I need to talk to Visna, fill him in.”
At this point a waitress arrived with menus, briefly interrupting their conversation.
“Let’s order now,” Gabriel said. “I’m hungry.”
Food and wine ordered, they resumed where they’d left off.
“What about your blog?” Gabriel asked. “Couldn’t you post something there?”
She shrugged.
“I could, but like I said, why?”
“I don’t know. Maybe because the CIA and an American biotech company conspired with her to poison a village-worth of children in a weapons test? There has to be some mileage in that?”
“You’re right, there is. But I have to live here, Gabriel. Even if you stopped Hubert, her friends in the police and government are still running things here. I’d end up floating face-down in the middle of Tonlé Sap before any westerners had even read my blog.”
Her mention of the huge lake in Siem Reap reminded Gabriel of his question for her.
“Let’s c
ome back to that in a minute. But I wanted to ask you something. Where’s the nearest monastery to here?”
“Why?”
“Because,” he dropped his voice to a murmur, “the place where I killed Christie was a killing field. I heard that monks collect up the skulls and place them in stupas.”
She placed a fingertip on the tip of her nose and frowned as she thought.
“The nearest monastery to here is Ounalom.”
“Thanks. I’ll go out there tomorrow morning and speak to them.”
“Do you need an interpreter?” she asked with a smile.
Their food arrived. Sea bass for Gabriel, grilled squid for Lina. A sommelier opened and poured the wine, an absurdly expensive Chassagne-Montrachet. Lifting the deep-bellied glass to his nose, Gabriel inhaled the creamy, toasty smell of the wine then took a sip. He nodded his appreciation to the sommelier who nodded back – “Merci, monsieur.” – and poured each of them a generous glass before placing the bottle into a sweating ice bucket resting in a chrome stand.
They ate in companionable silence for a while. Gabriel sighed as his stomach gradually lost the empty feeling that had been plaguing him since the adrenaline of the last forty-eight hours had dissipated. When he felt able to speak, he reached across the table and laid his hand over Lina’s.
“Yes, please, to your offer to interpret. And look, I was thinking. Why don’t you come to America with me? You could publish the story there with no worries about attracting trouble. They’d bite your hand off.”
Then she did something that surprised Gabriel. She pulled her hand back. Glaring at him, she spoke in a harsher tone than he’d heard her use, even when she’d told him about Marie-Louise Hubert for the first time.
“Why on earth do you think I would want to go to America? The French merely colonised my country. It was the Americans who poured all those millions of bombs down from their B-52s. Doctor Henry Kissinger got the Nobel Peace Prize when he authorised a covert war against Cambodia. Never mind Flowers of Hope. Do you know the number one reason so many children here lack parents? UXOs. You know what that means, right?”
“Unexploded ordnance.”
“Yes! Cluster bombs. Here the children call them bombies. The estimate is from two to six million unexploded cluster munitions in Cambodia. They lie just beneath the surface in farms, rice paddies, villages, country roads. Each the size of a grapefruit. One day your mum and dad are out working in the field and then next, bang! Dead mum, dead dad. Blown to shreds. And if the bombies don’t get them, the landmines do. The Americans, the Khmer Rouge, the Vietnamese, they all used them. Sometimes the mines sank down and they laid a fresh minefield right over the top of the old one. You know how many landmines there are still here?”
Gabriel shook his head.
“About five million. Maybe six. That’s one for every three people in Cambodia.”
Realising he’d made a massive error, Gabriel tried to recover some ground.
“Lina, I’m sorry. It was a stupid thing to say. And I do know my history. Believe me, the thought that Kissinger got the Peace Prize after what he did to Cambodia and Laos is just as repugnant to me as it is to you. I was just trying to think of ways to help you get the story out there.”
Suddenly Lina’s face softened and the fire in her eyes retreated.
“Oh, Gabriel,” she said reaching for his hand and squeezing it. “I’m the one who should be apologising, not you. You stopped that evil woman from hurting all those children, and all I’m doing is lecturing you on Cambodian history. It’s just that I feel I have to be here, telling Cambodia’s story from the inside, not fleeing like so many have done and then looking back in. There are already too many westerners, including those bloody actresses, who treat Cambodia as some sort of virtue playground where they come to show off their compassion. I’d like to kick them all out!”
She tossed back the rest of her wine and reached for the bottle. As she stretched out a hand for the bottle, the sommelier materialised beside her and deftly removed it from her reach before refilling their glasses. Lina rolled her eyes for Gabriel’s benefit and he laughed. She smiled too, and in that moment the tension that had pushed them apart evaporated.
Later, in bed, he propped himself up on one elbow to look at her. She was sleeping, curled away from him. Her hair, unpinned, lay in a tangle of curling strands over one cheek. She was smiling as she slept, snuffing out little breaths and mumbling. As sleepers sometimes do when the body beside them changes position, she awoke and turned to look at him.
“Were you staring at me in my sleep, Gabriel?”
“Honestly? Yes, I was. You’re very beautiful.”
“Thank you. Last time, you said you didn’t have a girlfriend. I think that wasn’t true.”
“It is true. I don’t have a girlfriend.”
“Maybe not now. But you do have someone, don’t you? Someone special?”
Gabriel sighed and ran one curved finger across her lips.
“You are very perceptive. There is someone special. We were engaged. But she broke it off a year ago.”
“Why?”
“Oh, I don’t know, because of our jobs, I suppose. We both do fairly dangerous work.” Do? Not did? That’s interesting. I haven’t worked for a year. “She said she loved her work too much to give it up to have children. She went back to Sweden.”
“Poor Gabriel. You still love her, don’t you?”
He nodded.
“Yes, I do. But there’s nothing I can do about it.”
“Then let me help you forget. Just for a while.”
She pushed him onto his back and slid one leg across his own. As he hardened, she looked down at him and smiled.
“I sense you are leaving Cambodia soon, Gabriel. That’s a shame,” she said, easing herself down onto him. “You could do much good here.”
He reached for her breasts. Caressed the nipples, which were stiff with desire.
“It is a shame. But my duty lies back in the US.”
Gabriel awoke at eight. He slid out of bed, careful not to wake Lina, dressed and went out to buy some food. He returned after fifteen minutes with warm cinnamon buns and two takeaway coffees. He nudged Lina. She turned on her back, arm flung across her eyes against the sun, which was streaming in through the window.
“Good morning,” she said. “Is that coffee I smell?”
Gabriel handed her one of the coffees and the bag containing the buns.
With the food and drink gone, they took turns to shower and dress. When they were both ready, Gabriel opened the door and stood aside for Lina to leave before him.
“Ounalom?” he asked.
“Ounalom.”
51
Wat Ounalom
THEY walked to the monastery, arm in arm, Lina acting as Gabriel’s unofficial tour guide as they wound their way towards Preah Ang Eng Street. The monastery turned out to be a complex of buildings occupying a whole city block. They entered through a red-and-gold gateway, making respectful sampeahs to an orange-clad monk just inside. Lina approached the young man and spoke to him in rapid Khmer, gesturing at Gabriel from time to time and nodding frequently as the monk asked her questions. She came back to Gabriel, smiling.
“He says he will take us to the abbot. Come on.”
Gabriel followed Lina and the monk, who strode ahead, engaged in conversation, their heads inclined towards each other so their foreheads were almost touching. The narrow lane ran between concrete and brick buildings, then up ahead, Gabriel discerned the tall, ornately carved stupas that marked the monastery proper. The young monk beckoned him towards some steps. Lina took off her sandals and added them to a row of shoes in neat pairs. Gabriel bent to remove his own, then, barefoot, walked into the cool shade of the canopy.
“He says to wait here,” Lina said.
They watched the monk disappear down a corridor. Five minutes later he reappeared, walking beside an older man, whose robe was a deep red. The older man, who Gabriel assumed wa
s the abbot, made a sampeah. Gabriel brought his own hands together and bowed his head so his fingertips touched his forehead.
The abbot spoke, in slow but perfect English.
“Welcome to Wat Ounalom. Please, come with me.”
He turned and murmured to the young monk, who nodded, before making his own sampeah and hurrying away.
Gabriel fell into step beside the abbot, Lina taking up position on the old man’s other side, and the three walked along the corridor towards a plain wooden door at the far end. The room beyond was furnished simply, although it did have a western-style office desk and chair, bearing a landline phone and a PC.
“Please, sit,” the abbot said, indicating a low wooden sofa upholstered with plain white pads.
Gabriel and Lina perched on the unforgiving seat facing the abbot, who then sat on the floor before them, crossing his legs.
“Thank you for seeing me,” Gabriel said.
The abbot smiled, his brown eyes crinkling.
“Apparently, you found some of our brothers and sisters.”
“Yes, I’m afraid I did.”
“There is no need to be afraid. Their pain is in the past.”
Gabriel shook his head and smiled.
“I’m not actually afraid. It is just an expression.”
Now it was the abbot’s turn to smile.
“I know. Tell me, where did you find them?”
“In a village called Lenh Bat Nam.”
“I know the village. Where are they?”
“In a rice paddy. There is a tank.”
The abbot nodded.
“We will arrange to collect them. To bring them here.”
Then the abbot did something that to Gabriel seemed strange. He got to his feet, came closer to Gabriel, and placed the tips of his fingers to the space between Gabriel’s eyes, just above the bridge of his nose. Closing his eyes, he breathed in deeply through his nose and then let the air out again in a slow continuous outbreath that Gabriel could feel on his face. The abbot opened his eyes again and looked deep into Gabriel’s.
