by Kae Bell
Andrew started in his seat, jolted by her frankness. “Yes. If I am able to. But I’ll need your cooperation before I go out there.”
On edge from this discussion and dreading talking about Mondulkiri, Severine lifted her chin, exposing her slim white throat. Her eyes were wide. “Am I some kind of a suspect in this investigation?”
Overhead the fans whirred, the small electric buzz and phtt-phtt-phtt of the metal blades a rhythmic beat. Andrew studied Severine for a long minute. She held his gaze. He picked up his coffee and took a slow sip, the steam wafting in the air near his face. He shrugged.
“Ma’am, as I said, I simply need information about what Ben was doing in Mondulkiri. And where exactly he was.” Andrew sipped the beverage, the white cup obscuring his face.
“Fine.” She stood, pushing the chair back hard against the slate floor. “But I’m late and I need to go to work now. We can talk there during my lunch break. Here’s the address. Come by at eleven. The children will be in class then.”
Severine handed him a plain card with her name and an address. She nodded at the waiter, who swept in to clear her place.
Andrew read the card. Below Severine’s information was the organization’s name, in French: La Maison des Enfants D’Espère.
The House for Hope’s Children.
Severine watched him decipher the title with his school boy French.
“See you at 11.” She turned and walked toward the hotel lobby, disappearing behind the vast marble columns and into the cool, quiet shadows.
Chapter 7
Andrew sat in the back of a raggedy tuk-tuk, glancing occasionally at his watch. The orphanage was a long way out, southwest of town, past the airport, near a small tributary of the Mekong. The tributary ran full now, at the end of rainy season and was used by all for cooking, bathing, transport and disposal, serving as both plumbing and sewer. This far out, the poverty was unadulterated, not mixed discretely, as it was downtown, between fancy houses and fine clothing shops frequented only by wealthy locals and tourists.
On the way out of town, Andrew had noticed that they had picked up a tail. He wasn’t sure at first. He had initially seen a motorcycle start to follow them when they passed through the slums of Stung Meanchey. From there, Andrew had seen that the biker stayed with them a little too steadily, too doggedly, for it to be coincidence. But Andrew needed to shake it, to be sure. He’d asked the tuk-tuk driver to wend and weave through some side streets. The motorcycle, a crotch rocket, had increased its efforts to follow, as Andrew had expected. It was an inexpert tail, from the bike’s obvious turns, its driver hunched over, wearing a dark helmet, focused on not losing sight of the tuk-tuk, with no confidence that he could find it again. When Andrew was certain it was a tail, he lost it.
But now they were running late. It was well past 11:00 AM.
At last, the tuk-tuk turned off the main road down a side street leading to the destination. It bumped and jostled along the pitted dirt road. Andrew hung on to the metal bar in the cab as he bounced on the seat in the back. When the tuk-tuk got a few blocks from the orphanage, Andrew asked the driver to stop so he could walk. He wanted to see and seeing meant slowing down. He hopped out.
There were no sidewalks to speak of here. Houses, if they could be called that, lined the dirt roads. Small one-story shacks made of corrugated metal sheets, the main room about 10x10 feet, opened directly onto the street. It was obvious from the water line on several houses that these shacks flooded during heavy rains. On the far side of the street an open sewer paralleled the road. This too flooded during the rains, dumping its contents into people’s front rooms.
Ahead of him, several bare-foot Cambodian boys played a modified game of soccer, using a flip-flop as the ball, and more flip-flops as goals. Their small feet kicked up bowls of dust as they shifted the sandal back and forth along the improvised playing field, their thin brown limbs moving the “ball” expertly to the goal.
As Andrew walked by the game, play stopped for a moment as the boys watched him. Not too many white men came to this part of town. One brave young boy called out in perfect English “Mister, can I have a dollar?” Andrew waved and kept walking. He could see part of the orphanage sign ahead on the left. “Espère”
******
A burly guard watched him approach from a rusted metal lawn chair. Eight-foot high cement walls made the orphanage look more like a prison than a playground.
Andrew approached the guard, who stood up as Andrew got within five feet. The guard was not armed from what Andrew could see but he looked like he knew how to handle himself.
“I’m here to see Severine.”
“Name?”
“Andrew Shaw.”
The guard pulled out a walkie-talkie.
“Andrew Shaw, Ma’am?”
Andrew heard the response come through, Severine’s voice crackly over the handheld: “Send him through, Vith.”
The guard ambled toward the iron gate. A thick steel padlock secured the heavy fence. Eyeing Andrew, Vith pulled a massive set of jangling keys from his belt, selected the correct key and unlocked the padlock, sliding the heavy black bolt back and pulling open the gate. Vith gestured with his left hand for Andrew to proceed inside.
Andrew stepped through the gate and surveyed the open square. A bubbling fountain in the middle highlighted stone elephants at play in the water. Along the edges were several mahogany benches, each with a brass plaque, bearing names of international donors. High concrete walls surrounded the courtyard on three sides.
Directly in front of Andrew, the main building, a two-story white structure showcased a lack of architectural imagination, with sharp corners and no adornment. A long hallway ran from the front toward the back of the building and Andrew could hear high-pitched voices bouncing out of rooms off the hallway, as children recited the alphabet and read fairy tales aloud. Andrew sat down on a bench and waited. He ran his hand along the wood of the bench. It had a fine grain, its wood from trees harvested in-country.
Severine emerged from the main archway, wiping her hands on a yellow dish towel. She looked different from earlier this morning, Andrew saw. Rejuvenated. Relieved. Smiling. She walked to the bench and stood in front of Andrew.
“You made it. Welcome.” She gestured around the courtyard.
Andrew waved away a fly intent on biting his bare arm. “Not without incident.” He explain his lateness, he described a traffic accident he’d seen on the way, a collision between a truck and a motodop whose driver had not been wearing a helmet.
“Yes. That is the way here. There’s always something that goes wrong. But you get used to it.” She shrugged. “You have to.”
“Good to know.” He looked at his watch. “Is this an OK time? I know you’d said eleven.” It was now just shy of noon, the sun directly overhead.
“Yes. For a short visit. I’m quite behind today since did not come in yesterday. My staff has mostly deserted me today to help their families with the rice harvest.”
“Isn’t there a machine for that?” Andrew asked.
“Not here. Here everything is done by hand.”
“Well, this shouldn’t take long. I have just a few questions.” He pulled out a notebook. “OK if I take notes?”
Severine raised her eyebrows, looking at the notebook. “So official. Am I to be on the record?”
“It’s just to help me remember. Over forty, my memory is shot.”
Severine nodded. “OK.” She took a seat by Andrew on the bench, leaving a wide space between them.
Andrew consulted the list of questions he had written up last night and a few more he had added this morning after the encounter with Severine at the hotel.
“I understand Ben’s work was demining? Is that what he was doing in Mondulkiri?”
Severine smoothed out her long tan skirt and said, “Most of his work was demining farms and forests in the provinces. There are so many mines still in this country, even now, after so many years…But this j
ob was different. This client didn’t hire him to do any demining.”
Andrew looked up from his notebook.
“What was he hired to do?” he asked.
“Prospecting.” Severine said the word carefully, her accent heavy on the first syllable.
“Prospecting.” Andrew repeated the word and Severine nodded.
“For?”
“Metal.”
Andrew narrowed his eyes. This was news. “Like…scrap metal?”
Severine looked at him with thinly veiled exasperation. “No. Precious metal. Gold, silver, like that.”
“Who hired him to do this work?”
“I don’t know,” she said.
Andrew stared at her, unsatisfied with this response.
“Sorry for how this sounds but…how can you not know who your husband worked for?” Andrew asked.
Severine gave him a cold stare and then asked, “Do you know how many NGOs there are in town, Mr. Shaw?”
“No. I do not.” He knew the term though. NGO. Non-Governmental Organization. A lot of the young people he’d met at Ruby’s last night had worked at NGOs. They all seemed to have a burning cause.
“Over two thousand. Two thousand NGOs.” Severine was fired up, Andrew could see. She clearly didn’t like being faulted where her husband was concerned. But she was talking, so that was good. Only way he was going to get any answers. He let her continue uninterrupted.
“Ben worked for so many of them, often for free. Maybe one hundred NGOs he worked for, maybe more. And those are the ones I know about. You try to keep it straight, which field your husband is digging in for explosives and for whom. It is not so easy. After a while, I stopped asking.”
Andrew nodded, chastised. He thought it best to change topics. He’d try a different approach on that topic.
“Where’d he pick up the demining skills? Not really something you learn in school.”
“In the Army.”
“He was military?”
Severine looked up. “Yes. I assumed you knew that, you know so much about him. He was in four years, enlisted. That’s why he didn’t get along with his father, who’d wanted Ben to go to university. Ben didn’t see the point when he could help right away.”
“Where’d he serve?”
“Afghanistan. 2006-2010. He was Infantry.”
“What province?” Andrew didn’t think she’d know. She surprised him.
“Helmand,” Severine answered. Andrew looked down at his notebook. He’d had some buddies there.
“Why didn’t he stay in?”
“He lost an eye to an IED,” Severine said.
Andrew nodded in understanding. He knew plenty of guys who had lost limbs and lives to the improvised explosive devices used in today’s warfare. But he was most curious about something else.
“So he went from the service into humanitarian demining? How does that happen? Seems like not the first choice of careers?” Andrew asked.
Severine opened her hands in front of her, as if presenting a gift. “The children. He worried so much about the children in these countries. No toys, no games, all they have is the outdoors. But for many, there is no safe place to play. He’d seen the impact war had on children. So when he got out, he picked a developing country and went to help.”
“And so, Cambodia. How did you two meet?”
In her lap, Severine’s cell phone rang, a loud traditional bell ring. She glanced down at it.
“Please, excuse me.” She put a hand on Andrew’s arm and then stepped away from the bench to take the call.
In the second story window, a small Cambodian girl, her dark hair in high ponytails, peaked out at Andrew from behind a thin blue curtain. Andrew waved at her and she giggled and disappeared.
Severine ended her call and returned. “I’m afraid I’ve got to cut our time short. My donors are stopping by. This is completely unexpected. They’ve just flown in from Canada and are en route here. I need to get the children and myself ready. When the donors come in person, I need to reassure them that I’m spending their money wisely.”
“We’re not quite done, I’m afraid.” Andrew glanced at his notebook, where several key questions were still answered.
Severine ran her hands through her hair, pulling at a tangle. “In fact we are, I’m afraid. Truth be told, we’re broke here. If I don’t get a check from them today, these kids won’t eat. I’ve got a month’s worth of cash, that’s it.”
Andrew glanced up at the window. This time there were three children, all smiles and giggles, peaking out from behind the curtain. Severine turned to see what Andrew was staring at.
“Ohh, those rascals. They’re supposed to be studying. They are too curious for their own good.” Severine made a fake scowl at the children, her hands on her hips, and the children ran away from the window, giggling, knowing full well they could never be in big trouble with her. The sound of their scampering feet in the hallway echoed in the courtyard.
Severine looked back at Andrew. “So, more tomorrow perhaps?” she said, with an almost embarrassed grimace. She started toward the gate.
“Sure.” Andrew hurried toward her and the gate. “Here’s my number, in case you think of anything else in the meantime that could be useful.” He handed her a slip of notepad paper, on which he’d written his local phone number.
Severine took it, smiling at the ripped paper. “Nice card.”
Andrew shrugged. “It’s all I could get on short notice.”
Severine raised her eyebrows. “This isn’t my day job,” he offered.
Severine smirked. “It shows.” She waved at the guard to get his attention. “Vith will let you out.”
Vith was busy sweeping the stoop and looked up at his name. He placed the straw broom against the white wall and unlocked the gate, as Severine hurried away across the courtyard and down the long arched hallway. Andrew looked back after her. Vith jangled his keys to hurry Andrew along.
Andrew walked out the gate and onto the dirt road. His waiting tuk-tuk was parked across the road, its cheerful driver chatting with a red-helmeted motodop driver, a distant cousin he’d not seen in ages, who lived in this neighborhood. Seeing Andrew, he started the engine. Andrew hopped in, leaning his weary shoulders against the steel metal bars, his bare legs white on the ripped red vinyl seat. “Back to the Embassy.” He still had more questions than answers. But it was a start.
Chapter 8
Thin afternoon sunlight filtered in through the grubby rectangular window of Andrew’s basement lair. Andrew sat hunched over his computer. He’d spent most of the afternoon calling mining companies in Phnom Penh, a list pulled from the Internet. One by one, he’d asked each person who answered if they had employed an individual prospector named Ben Goodnight in the past year. He didn’t expect them to say ‘yes’ outright, but he figured he would be able to tell from a hesitation or reluctance to answer, who deserved a follow-up in-person visit.
But most of them said ‘no’ and convincingly so, explaining, unprompted, that they used larger outfits or had their own internal people for early stage prospecting. No one sounded like they had anything to hide. One person expressed her condolences. She had heard through the local gossip mill, alive and well in this small town, what had happened to Ben.
Aside from the calls, Andrew had read everything he could find on-line about the local mining industry. It was booming, attracting all sorts, including a handful of unsavory characters, like any venture that promised easy money. Companies paid the Cambodian government for the right to prospect in the remotest reaches of the country, Mondulkiri, Ratanakiri, Preah Vihar, no stone unturned in the search for riches.
From what Andrew could tell, no one had struck it rich yet, not in a big way. But the handfuls of gems and gold that had been found, mostly from artisanal mines in the north, were enough to feed the frenzy. People kept coming.
Andrew flipped through the articles he'd printed and highlighted, looking for one particular piece he'd skimmed earl
ier. Something in it had stuck in his mind. He found the page and scanned down the article, an interview with a local mining industry expert, talking about capital markets in Cambodia.
“Most of the companies here are public, listed on major exchanges on Hong Kong, Australia, the US. Sure, there are a one or two private companies still remaining, but we’d certainly expect them to go public in the next year, to take advantage of the capital infusion. Mining is capital-intensive and you need to have a solid long game to stick around for the big payoff."
All the companies Andrew had called that afternoon were public companies. He kept reading the article:
"What are those?"
“KMM and Kingdom Gold. Both small firms, mostly focused on exploration."
“KMM?”
“Kampuchea Mining and Minerals.”
The interview went on to discuss more esoteric issues in mining, like the depths of mines and types of drilling for different rock formations.
Andrew typed ‘Kingdom Gold’ into the search field. The company website was a plain blue background with text in the middle, explaining that the company was no longer in operation. Looked like it had gone under.
Andrew typed the next name, Kampuchea Mining and Minerals, into the search field. This search yielded a more elaborate website, a deep gold background with a temple silhouette, black angular lettering listing the company’s address and phone number, and a “Contact Us” button along the side, presumably for interested investors. Understated but classy, Andrew thought.
He copied down the address and phone number and dialed the number to see if anyone was still in the office on this late Monday afternoon. A receptionist answered the phone. Andrew hung up, grabbed his gun and keys from the desk and hurried upstairs. If he pushed it, he could get there in time to catch someone for a chat.
******
Andrew’s motodop pulled up in front of a squat two-story office building across from the Caltek Bokor gas station in Boeung Keng Kang, a neighborhood popular with expats, about a mile from the Embassy. Andrew studied the scratched and heavily fingerprinted brass plaque by the locked front door. It listed several tenants, including a dentist, a physical therapist, and a masseuse whose name was also written in Khmer script below the English letters. On the fifth-line down, he saw the name Kampuchea Mining and Minerals, listed as occupying the second floor, Suite 213.
