Peter's Christmas

by M. L. Buchman

  “How—” He cut himself off before he could continue. It made no sense. The temple was atop the escarpment, the rest of which was Thailand. How this little piece had been snipped off and given to Cambodia must have a background story. But it would be very impolitic of him to call the Cambodian claim illogical, especially sitting with the country’s Deputy Prime Minister and U.N. Ambassador.

  But Geneviève had read his question anyway. “The original agreed border was the watershed. If it drained north, it was Thai. The temple grounds drain south. Then a line was drawn on a map a hundred years ago by people who had never been here and much of the north-draining land, including the crucial access road, were given to Cambodia. Now, it is a part of the area’s history. Would you, Mr. President, be willing to give up Point Roberts?”

  “Point Roberts?”

  “In your Washington State. It is a tiny piece of British Columbia land that sticks into the middle of the Straits of Georgia. This piece of Canadian peninsula is technically United States soil because a line of the forty-ninth parallel was drawn as a border between your country and Canada in 1846. Would you be willing to give that up?”

  “You make your point, Chief of Unit Beauchamp.” How carefully had she prepared for this meeting? What was just a one-hour stop-and-admire visit for him had been intense preparation by how many skilled people?

  Together they turned back to the window. The temple was a long line of exotic stone buildings stretching half a mile along the crest of the promontory. “They really do look as if they belong to the land.”

  “Yes, sir, you have a good eye. This is not only an exceptional sample of Khmer Empire architecture, blending to both the stone and the site. It is also a very pure site, culturally. Due to its remote location, it was abandoned for hundreds of years after the fall of the Khmer Empire in the 1400s, preserving the design from future depredation. It has suffered more in the last fifty years than in the five hundred before that.”

  “What happened fifty years ago?” The helicopter circled over the Thai jungle, and he could see what he assumed were Thai Army vehicles stationed along the highway. A dug-in camp lurked farther back in the trees. A glance back revealed that Frank Adams was also observing them very closely.

  “The Khmer Rouge, Mr. President.” Pok and Moul both looked grim at even the mention of the name of that brutal piece of their country’s history. Two million or more had died on the Killing Fields of Pol Pat, a quarter of Cambodia’s population. Only Vietnam had stood against him, for which they had been internationally reviled. It was moments like this that made his heart hurt. How could he work to help improve a planet which was capable of such events?

  # # #

  Genny stayed close by the President as they toured the temple. The helicopters had gone back aloft to provide additional protection. A line of Secret Service agents had secured the entry. Other than a half dozen agents, the two Cambodians, and the dozen news people who had been authorized to join them after an arduous land journey of several hours duration, they were alone.

  “You are beautiful. You belong in such places.” The President’s whisper was barely enough to reach her ears though they stood but a pace apart. Frank was next closest, and appeared to be listening to his radio.

  “You are ‘deeply enamored’ and therefore also deeply biased. It is this place that is so beautiful, Mr. President. It is a sad horror, the things that occur here. This was the last place of resistance against the Khmer Rouge, the last holdout before Pol Pot destroyed this country. It was also the last place the Khmer Rouge held, when Vietnam finally defeated them.”

  “Well, it is very defensible.”

  “It is also very steep. It is where in 1979 the Thai government drove forty thousand Cambodian refugees from the Khmer Rouge off the cliff to ‘send them home.’ Ten thousand died on the descent, or in the mine fields below. This is not a happy place, Mr. President. But it is an important one.”

  She led him to Gropura IV. “There is no building like this one left in the world. It is unique, and now it has been damaged by the gunfire between Cambodia and Thailand.”

  They stood side-by-side in the knee-high grass and looked up at the temple before them. The gray base rose person-tall in broad horizontal layers of curved and lined stone. It stretched ten meters wide and over fifty long. The roof was long gone, but square columns a meter through reached several stories into the air, holding an equally massive lintel of stone as easily now as it had for a thousand years. At either end of the gropura stood a massive crown of carved stone another half-dozen meters tall.

  “That such a thing, older than Angkor Wat, should still be standing is a miracle.”

  “What does it mean?” Peter took her hand.

  “You shouldn’t do that, Mr. President, we are being watched.” But he kept his hand in hers. He had decided they were a couple, and apparently no longer cared what anyone thought. Did she? Not enough to withdraw her hand.

  “What does it mean?” he kept his voice even.

  She looked around. Pok and Moul were enthralled to have such access to American news services and were making the most of it back at the Second Gropura. Only Frank and Beatrice were close to them. Several other Secret Service agents were ranged between them and the rest of their party.

  “Preah Vihear was a temple built to Shiva, the Hindu God of Transformation, of Beginnings and Endings. It was a place of worship and meditation. We have also identified those two buildings,” she pointed back the structures to either side of Gropura III, “as libraries. This was also a place of learning.”

  “Transformation, you say?”

  “Yes.” Once again she attempted to recover her hand. “You really should not do this in front of the reporters. It is not seemly for the President to be seen so with a woman to whom he isn’t married.” She lifted their joined hands and began peeling back his index finger.

  “I plan to marry you, Kim-Ly Geneviève Beauchamp, if you’ll have me. So, I think the American press will simply have to get used to it.”

  Genny struggled for a moment longer until his words sunk in.

  “You…What?” Her ears were ringing. The vast silence that was Preah Vihear had suddenly been filled with a roar louder than a typhoon upon the ocean that lay five hundred kilometers away. She was suddenly glad for Peter’s hand holding hers so that she didn’t simply collapse to the ground.

  “This is a place of transformation, is it not?”

  Genny found a nod somewhere, but her voice was gone.

  Peter turned to look at her with those soft warm eyes of his. He took her other hand. Her only anchors in the whirling storm about her, his two strong hands. Then he dropped to one knee before her.

  She might have heard Frank Adams in the background say, “Oh shit!” But it was hard to tell.

  “Will you have me, Geneviève? I don’t know how we will live together, but I know that I cannot stand to live apart.”

  She made her living with words, with being able to handle and manage any situation. In this moment she had lost any words and could only nod her head and see Peter’s answering smile.

  Frank Adams shouted something in the background.

  Then he tackled her from behind and drove them all to the ground.

  Chapter 12

  Genny lay dazed for a moment. Had she just agreed to marry the President of the United States? She had. Peter had asked and she’d said yes. Okay, she’d nodded her agreement, but that didn’t make it any less true.

  Then someone had tackled her.

  Frank.

  He’d slammed her to the ground.

  He rolled off her and now lay on top of Peter. Then Beatrice slammed down onto Genny.

  “I wasn’t trying to kill your President. I was only saying I marry him. Would marry him,” she corrected her English.

  She struggled to sit up, shoving at Beatrice, who did
n’t give way.

  “Damn it! Lie still, Ms. Beauchamp!” Beatrice’s voice was clipped, hard.

  “That’s supposed to be Genny…” But she didn’t get much energy behind it as she became aware of what else was happening at Temple Preah Vihear.

  Gunfire above them.

  And, she looked skyward, a green-and-white Marine helicopter spiraling down out of the sky.

  Chapter 13

  Peter had at least seen Frank barreling toward him a moment before he crashed into them, but it hadn’t soften the blow. Geneviève had flailed into him and Frank had driven them both into the grass.

  He knew of only one reason Frank would do such a thing.

  Sure enough. Gunfire. Up in the air. All the scenarios, all the lectures about domestic crazies and international terrorists did nothing to prepare him for the shock.

  Someone was trying to kill him. He didn’t know which was worse, the cold fear that swamped him, or the terror that they might kill Geneviève instead.

  Even as Frank rolled over to cover him and Beatrice moved in to cover Geneviève, Peter could see at least some of what was happening. One of the escort planes had shot down one of the Marine One helicopters. Flames coming out of her engines, the helicopter was spiraling down toward the ground, the pilot clearly fighting to perform an auto-rotate landing.

  Even as he watched, the second helicopter was struck. The crew chiefs were fighting back with rifles, but were no match for the fighter jet. They were close enough to the ground, that though they pretty much fell out of sky, they didn’t have far to fall. Still they rolled and tumbled until they fetched up hard on part of the temple. A huge stone block high atop a column teetered, wobbled, and then settled without falling.

  “I’ve got to move you, now!” Frank grabbed his shoulder and dragged him to his feet.

  Geneviève was still struggling to free herself from beneath Beatrice.

  “She’s coming with us.”

  “No time, Mr. President.” Frank pulled at him again but he resisted.

  “My fiancée is coming with us!”

  “Fiancée?” Frank stared at him nose-to-nose for two heartbeats as he digested the information, his fist still clamped in the shoulder of Peter’s suit jacket. “Got it. Beat, up! We’re on the move!”

  In moments, Peter had Geneviève’s hand clamped in his. The two of them stayed low and sprinted behind Frank.

  The plane, having finished the helicopters, now strafed the people on the plateau, scattering them like chaff.

  Frank dove behind a low temple wall. Peter dragged Geneviève down with him as he did the same.

  The scattered Secret Service agents returned fire, but handguns and small rifles against a jet served as little more than a distraction to the pilot.

  Then the agents grouped together and moved away.

  “Hey, shouldn’t they be coming to help protect us?”

  “Mr. President,” Frank had his gun out and was scanning the sky and ground for other attackers. “Per training, they’re pretending they already have you with them to draw the aggressor’s fire. Now shut up, I’m busy trying to save you.”

  Sure enough, the plane took another run at the cluster of agents moving toward the entrance of the temple complex.

  Frank was calling into his radio. “Merlin unharmed. Continue to distract.”

  The plane fired a rocket that impacted a low stone wall a hundred feet away, close to the clustered agents. There was a roar that pounded against Peter’s ears and a ball of fire. Fragments of rock whistled through the air, he saw two agents drop to the ground.

  Then a second plane dove in.

  It attacked the first.

  “He’s a renegade!” Peter shouted to Frank. It would fit. One plane doing his job, but the other one hijacked for the attack. Target of opportunity.

  Frank nodded, “But why would they want to kill you?”

  “They don’t.” Geneviève crawled up to face Frank. “Injure, perhaps. The pilot could easily have placed that rocket in the center of those agents. I think that the President is wanted alive, as a bargaining chip. The question is by who?”

  Peter looked at her. Her hair was a mess, her lip was bleeding, and her hands scraped raw, but she didn’t seem to care about that. Instead, she looked pissed, and calculating.

  “Cambodians?” Frank was watching the two planes dogfight above, but he was clearly paying attention to what Geneviève had to say.

  “No. The President is a guest of their country. You saw how offended Minister Pok was by Thailand’s claims to the temple. Nationalist pride. He’d never want to harm the President while he was a guest of Cambodia. Thailand?”

  Peter finally saw it.

  “Yes, Thailand. And not some random terrorist. This is government sponsored, or at least a faction of it. They hijacked a Cambodian fighter jet to attack us. If he survives the Cambodian jet’s attempt to protect us—”

  An explosion shattered the air above. A ball of fire exploded just past the edge of the escarpment. A shattered jet spun downward in flames. No pilot ejected.

  “Which was that?”

  “The Cambodian, sir. One Thai fighter is still aloft.”

  “Then, if Geneviève is right,” Peter kept an eye on the plane. “He will make one or two more runs at us for show, wounding but not killing. After that, he’ll be shot down by the Thai Army forces we saw stationed beyond the entrance. But they’ll shoot him down over Thai soil so that he has a chance to parachute to safety.”

  “Then,” Geneviève picked up the story. “Then they will come to capture you, killing all of the Cambodians. They will claim that they saved you and use it as an excuse to attack Cambodia, if not in war, then in the international courts.”

  “Which means,” Frank glanced at his watch. “We have about three minutes to get you off this plateau, Mr. President.”

  “I know the way!” Genny spoke as if she too were one of his trained agents. “But I need a couteau. A knife.”

  Frank looked at her in confusion as she held out a palm. With a shrug, Frank produced one from somewhere.

  Geneviève used it to slit the side of her skirt well up her thigh. She handed the knife back to Frank.

  “You own me a new skirt, Mr. President.”

  “I’ll buy you a wedding dress, Geneviève.”

  She flashed him a smile, then was off and running.

  Peter made to follow, but Frank stopped him with a hand against the center of his chest.

  Frank stared him straight in the eye. “You trust her?”

  “A hundred percent. And she’s Southeast Asia Chief of Unit for UNESCO World Heritage. She knows this site better than anyone here.”

  Frank processed for an eyeblink, then nodded.

  Then Peter, Frank, and Beatrice sprinted after Geneviève.

  Chapter 14

  “This is crazy!” Beatrice shouted in Genny’s ear.

  The agent had caught up, but let Genny lead as they dodged through the temple grounds. Now, they were holed up by the water cistern below Gropura II. They were twenty meters below the main temple level. She’d worn low-heeled shoes knowing they’d be walking around the site, but wished she’d worn sneakers. She tore the slit in her skirt a little higher, she should have slit both sides.

  “The Thai Army is about to storm the entrance,” Frank arrived with Peter close beside him. Then he pointed to the north. “And the Cambodian reinforcements are going to be coming up the road to the west. That’s where we have to get, but you are leading us down to the east. Why?”

  “Because we aren’t using either road.”

  Genny focused on Frank, knowing it was him she had to convince.

  “There are a few dozen Cambodian fighters near the entrance gate. They hold the high ground above the entrance stairs. These are veterans, if the Khmer people kn
ow anything, it is war. The Thais may be a better equipped, more modern army, but the Khmer will hold their ground for a long time despite being vastly outnumbered.”

  Frank nodded as he acknowledged her assessment.

  “And the nearest reinforcements are probably in Angkor Wat. That’s an hour away, even under the very best of conditions, which these roads do not ever have. The nearest air assets are in Phnom Penh, an hour away, if they even are aware of the attack.”

  “They know. If Beale tells them. I reached her and she’s enroute overland.”

  Genny felt better for that. But overland meant Emily was still in Vietnam and would be at least an hour away.

  “We need to keep the President safe from the Thai Army for at least an hour and I know only one way to do that.”

  She could see Frank weighing factors.

  As if on cue, the hijacked Cambodian fighter plane made one more strafing run, this time clearly firing hard on the Cambodian positions at the Gropura I entrance. Then, the Cambodian return fire must have scored a hit, as the Thai forces would probably be missing the hijacked plane on purpose, just firing for show. The jet wobbled in the sky as if it had stumbled and tripped, then it caught on fire. Moments later, well into Thailand, the pilot ejected and a white chute opened up almost immediately.

  “Bastard!” Beatrice cursed beside her.

  “You need to decide now!” Genny ordered Frank and gritted her teeth. She did know what was best.

  Frank looked at the President.

  “Hell of a woman you chose, Mr. President. Congratulations.”

  “Thanks, I know.”

  Chapter 15

  Peter followed his “hell of a woman” as she led his Secret Service detail to the northeast through the trees. They struck down-slope whenever they could, avoiding both the cliff edge and any sight lines to the Thai forces above.

  Frank reported that most of his Secret Service squad was joining with the Cambodians in defense of the temple. Only one of the six Marines from the two helicopters was uninjured and two were dead.