by Kae Bell
Without warning, the front door swung open and a Cambodian woman pushed her way past Andrew, barely glancing at him. Andrew assumed this was the secretary who had answered the phone when he’d called twenty minutes earlier. Andrew caught the door as it drifted close and stepped into the dim hallway.
While the outside of the building was run down, the inside was done up in an expansive, professional style. The wooden floors were shiny and new, the walls painted a deep red and decorated with high-end, local art, etchings of elephants and temples, black and white photographs of local tourist spots.
Andrew made his way up the staircase to the second floor, where he saw the sign for KMM at the far end of the hallway. He pulled the door open and stepped inside. A fat red-faced man sat sideways at a large L-shaped wooden desk, watching his computer screen as he muttered a string of expletives, in a thick Australian accent. He turned toward the door when Andrew walk in.
“What the blast are you doing in here? We’re closed!” the man yelled, huffing like a steam train as he stood up from the desk to reveal his massive stomach, which tested the buttons of a wrinkled blue shirt. He’d been holding a lit cigar in his right hand, which he’d dropped at Andrew’s unannounced entrance. The cigar now lay on the floor, singeing the carpet. The smell of smoke and burning polyester filled the room.
“Sorry, I called but I got cut off, so thought I’d just head over and pop in.”
It was sort of true, he figured. “I’m Andrew Shaw. I’m with the US Embassy.” He stepped forward and extended his hand.
The man ignored the greeting. “I don’t give a blast who you’re with. This isn’t the United States, if you’d failed to notice. No one gives a shit who you are with in this town. What the fuck do you want?”
Here’s a charmer, Andrew thought. “I have a couple questions for you about Ben Goodnight. He recently was killed in the field.”
This information settled the old boy down, as he harrumphed himself back into his seat and into a lower-grade hysteria. He’d picked up his cigar from the floor and puffed on it but the flame was out. He relit the cigar tip with a cheap green plastic lighter and squinted at Andrew.
“Yes, I’d heard about that, bloody shame. He was a good kid. Hard working. Willing to take a risk. Hard to find dependable talent out here. All the young folks doped up on cheap available drugs or can’t pull themselves off of all the cheap available ass. Or both. But that Ben, he was a good one. Solid.” He puffed on his cigar as he eyed Andrew. “What did you want to ask me?”
“I’m trying to find out who Ben was working for and what exactly he was doing out there in the field.”
The man puffed on his cigar. He did his best thinking while smoking.
“Listen here,” he said, chewing on the cigar’s end. “I was heading out for a drink. You seem like a decent guy. Let’s talk over a whiskey. You’re buying.” He stood and stuck out his hand. “I’m Tom. Tom O’Connell.”
Andrew smiled and shook the man’s beefy hand. “Lead the way.” He’d bought many an adult beverage for a source.
The bar called Abbey’s was conveniently located only two buildings down from KMM’s office, a single-story storefront, a neon sign in the window. It was a grungy but popular dive that had seen better days but not happier ones. The front bar was busy on the early Monday evening, filled with fresh faces, ready to start the weeknight with a serious buzz. Andrew saw the booze on display was all top shelf, including his favorite Waypoint whisky.
Tom led the way past the busy front bar down the carpeted hall into a dim and smoky back room filled with antique-looking furniture, all replicas, and large Plaster-of-Paris lion statues guarding each corner.
“This is ‘The Club’ back here. Men only. The front room is for the kids, the NGO workers, volunteers. Too much energy.”
The Khmer bartender had seen him approaching and poured two generous fingers of whiskey into a crystal tumbler.
“Make it two, Geoff. Courtesy of my friend here.”
Andrew nodded and pulled out a fifty, laid it on the bar, enough for couple fine whiskeys. The bartender poured another.
Tom took one and handed Andrew a glass. “We are not entirely uncivilized here.” They clinked glasses and Tom took a deep swig.
“So.” Andrew needed to keep this guy focused.
“Yeah. Ben did some work for me. Not a lot, since usually we go with more established players for the prospecting work. But he seemed like a bright lad, a go-getter. Every now and then I’d throw him a bone you know, stuff no one else wanted to do. As I said, hard to find good talent, people willing to take risks. I offered him a gig prospecting a bit of tricky terrain, hoped maybe he could streamline things for us.”
“How?” Andrew asked.
“The first phase of mining– ‘Exploration’, you with me? - is fucking expensive, cause you’re digging around in the dirt blind and mostly come up empty. Over and over. Ben was cheap, had his own metal detectors. Figured, if he could pinpoint a promising source, then I’d send in the big guns.”
“A source?”
Tom winced, as if in pain. “You don’t know shit about mining, do you?”
“Honestly, no.”
“Sources is what investors want to see, new sources of metal, preferably a thick, rich, easy-to-access vein. Investors, they’re kinda like heroin addicts that way.” Tom chortled at his joke.
“Investors?” Andrew asked. “I thought this was a private venture.”
“Sure it is.” Tom patted his hefty stomach. “But not my money. No, I got a couple pain-in-the-ass American investors who expect to see a big return. Couple of tech billionaires, think since they cracked open the Internet, they understand rocks too. Why don’t people just stick with what they know?”
Sensed an oncoming diatribe, Andrew interrupted. “So you sent Ben out prospecting? When was this?”
Tom took a deep swallow of his whiskey, thinking. “First time, about six months back, then again two months ago, then most recently, last month.”
“All three times to Mondulkiri?”
Tom looked up from relighting his cigar, which had gone out again. He raised his eyebrows and puffed as he shook his head. “I didn’t send him to Mondulkiri. I sent him to Ratanakiri, to the north. Sorry, mate but if he was in Mondulkiri, he was on someone else’s dime.” He finished his whisky. Two fingers went up and the bartender reloaded his glass.
Chapter 9
Late afternoon light flooded the orphanage kitchen. It was a large square room, windows on three sides. Cheerful yellow tiles covered the floor. An ancient-looking stove sat in the back corner, well-worn cookware hung from the high ceiling.
As she dried dishes alongside her Cambodian staff, Severine glanced at the guitar that sat unused, propped against the wall. Finished, she wished the children good night and gave last instructions to Kolab. Her assistant would manage the orphanage for the next two days, while Severine took time to sort through Ben’s things. And to think.
She spoke briefly to the night guard, who locked the door behind her and settled into his chair for an early evening snooze.
Outside the gate, Severine placed a massive well-padded helmet over her unruly black hair, started up her motorcycle and sped down the quiet dirt road toward her apartment on the far side of town, near the lake.
A block away, a yellow tuk-tuk sat parked by a flimsy metal shack, its plastic flaps closed against potential rain. The playing children had long ago disappeared. The tuk-tuk driver sat in the back cab, feigning sleep. Through serpentine eyes, he watched Severine say her goodnights.
“Meddling French bitch,” he muttered under his breath, watching Severine drive away. He dialed his phone, spoke briefly and hung up. He settled in for the night. He would await further instructions.
No one paid attention to the sleeping tuk-tuk driver. No one considered what trouble he might cause. Quite a bit, as it would happen.
*******
Severine zipped through the busy streets to her a
partment, passing monks clad in long flowing saffron robes and families of four perched all on a single moto. She honked at a friend riding a bicycle and waved at her hairdresser walking her dog down the dirty sidewalk, taking careful steps among broken beer bottles.
Ahead, at a four-way traffic light that only half of the vehicles obeyed, several Cambodian children stood together on the corner. As Severine pulled up, the kids approached her and held out thick white bracelets made of white jasmine flower buds, tied with red string.
“Flowers, lady? Flowers?”
Severine hated seeing kids on the street but they were all over this town. She didn’t like to encourage them to beg. But tonight, she reached into her pocket for riel, and handed the handful of bills to the smallest, dirtiest little boy she’d ever seen, who smiled at her, his brown eyes wide, as he placed a white Jasmine bracelet on her slim wrist, said “Ah Kuhn,” and then ran off with his remaining wares.
The light changed to green and Severine started up again, an impatient black SUV honking behind her.
As she wove in and out of the traffic, Severine held the bracelet to her nose and inhaled. She knew the kids should be in school. Kids made a good living on the street, easy money from tourists.
But today, she’d needed flowers.
She recalled Andrew’s question from the morning. How did you two meet?
So perfectly, she thought, looking at the flowers.
She turned off the main road and navigated several smaller, pot-holed side streets, lined with modest single-story family shops. On every corner, tuk-tuk and moto-dop drivers congregated, talking, eating, and waiting for a fare. Grungy western backpackers walked down the street, their unwashed dreadlocks like matted cats. They peered at Severine as she sped by.
As Severine drove over a short bridge, she held her breath. The open canal below her was about five feet wide, its murky water dotted with floating water bottles, soda cans, and other unmentionable debris. It snaked its way through the city, behind homes, businesses, pagodas and museums, open to refuse from all.
A half-mile farther, she turned right and drove twenty feet down a quiet lane, where she pulled up next to a three-story pink house with a wide concrete courtyard, behind a high iron gate.
She let herself in, her key hanging from a white shoelace around her neck. She hadn’t been back home since the trip to Mondulkiri. Her heart beat hard as she walked up the steps. Pots and pans crashed in a neighbor’s kitchen nearby. Somewhere, someone practiced a Jack Johnson song on an out-of-tune guitar.
As soon as she reached the front door, Severine knew something was wrong. The deadbolt was not on, which she knew she’d locked. The pink curtain that covered the glass had been pushed back a couple inches, as if someone had been peering out. Watching.
“Hello?” she called out, stepping in to the hallway. She heard some footsteps in the back of the house near the kitchen and saw a figure jump out an open window onto the bamboo scaffolding outside.
“Damn it,” she said. She’d known the workers were coming to do work on the roof and she’d forgotten to close all the windows before they started. She figured the intruder was a mischievous kid. The local children were fascinated by her collection of glass frogs on display in a bookshelf in the front hall. She’d been collecting them since she was little, her father presenting one to her after each of his trips abroad. Other than the clothes on her back, the collection was the only thing she’d brought with her from France.
She flicked on the hallway light and gasped.
The hallway floor was covered with broken glass. Her collection had been knocked to the ground, the figures smashed, the pieces kicked up and down the wood floors. She walked quickly past the mess into the living room.
There she saw papers strewn across the floor, boxes overturned, the desk drawers pulled out. The sofa cushions had been sliced open and the stuffing pulled out. A large ceramic Buddha had been lifted up and smashed on the wood floor. It lay shattered in pieces by the window. She stepped toward the window and picked up a fragment. It had been a gift from her husband.
Severine couldn’t process this alone. She pulled out her phone and rooted in her purse for the slip of paper Andrew had given her.
He answered on the first ring.
“So, now I need your help.” She described the scene in her hallway and living room.
Andrew asked, “Where do you live?”
She gave him the address, then sat on the torn sofa, staring at the broken pieces.
*******
By the time Andrew arrived, the moon had risen halfway into the clear sky. Severine sat on the top step of the outside stairs, watching him, smoking a thin cigarette and listening to the buzzing insects droning overhead, playing Russian roulette in the bright porch light.
With a nod from Severine, the night guard - standard in most residences -opened the heavy gate, pushing its weight with a practiced hand. Andrew rushed in, climbing the stairs two steps at a time. As he approached, Severine stubbed out her cigarette on the concrete, stood and turned, wordlessly opening the front screen door for Andrew to go in. She followed him.
The lights were all on in the house. Andrew surveyed the mess in the hallway. “Shit.” He turned to her, studying Severine’s face to get a sense of how she was handling this. So far so good.
“Do you know what they were looking for?”
“Yes, in fact I do.” She picked up a large glass fragment of her favorite green frog, its golden eye staring at her. “Follow me.”
She led Andrew into the main room. French doors opened out into the night, street sounds filtering up into the bright room. A lone moth darted in, seeking the source of the light.
Andrew looked around. There were papers all over the floor, the desk, and the couch. Overturned cardboard boxes lay ripped and strewn across the floor, the contents dumped without care. They’d left nothing untouched. A night wind from the open window fluttered the papers.
“What is all this?”
“Ben’s records. He kept meticulous notes of his work.” She neatened a stack of papers on the couch, cornering the edges. “Among all this, they knew exactly what they were looking for. And they found it.”
“How do you mean?”
Severine picked up a black metal box, its flimsy metal lock bent and misshapen. She opened the box and turned it upside down. It was empty.
“This contained his reports to the Ministry, where he’d been, what he’d done, seen…found. He put all that into his reports and kept a copy for himself.”
“What reports? What Ministry?” Andrew felt heady, with the slight buzz that he got when things were about to light up.
Severine scratched her chin as she bit her lower lip. She was tired. She hadn’t slept now for three nights.
“Ben filed reports with the Ministry of Mining. He reported on things he found out in the jungle. Artifacts, remnants, old stone carvings. Nothing too big, usually just fragments. He’d find shards of pottery, old tools, parts of statues. Nobody has explored the deep woods out there because of all the leftover land mines. There’s still a lot of stuff out there, just waiting to be found. The Ministry rule is if it is historical, the Ministry wants to know. It’s how they decide whether to grant concessions to mining companies or to mark the land for preservation.”
Severine’s long hair framed her face. “And that’s what they took. All of his Ministry reports.” She surveyed the mess on the floor. “They made quite a mess finding them. But they knew the reports were here.”
Andrew stared at the empty box. “The report would say what he found and who he was working for?”
“Yes, that would all have been in the report.”
Andrew stared out the window, thinking, and turned back to Severine. “But Ben couldn’t have filed a report for this trip. He…never made it back.”
Severine nodded, accepting the harsh truth. “Yes, you’re right. But he had filed a report from his first trip out there. He said he needed to go back again
to this one site, wanted me to go along.”
Andrew started at this revelation, that Ben had previously visited the site where he was killed.
Severine picked at the stuffing on the slashed couch. “If it’s helpful, I do know that he got paid in cash. And a lot of it.”
“How much?”
“Five thousand dollars for two days work.”
“Is that good money? It sounds like very good money.” Andrew didn’t know the going rate for working in a minefield. His job was filled with risk, but not take-one-wrong-step-and-you’re-dead kind of risk.
“Yes. Very. He was thrilled.” She picked at a hangnail on her left thumb, a nervous habit. She looked at her bare left hand. Her fingernails were unpolished and short, bitten to the quick.
“Look. This might not be easy. But can you tell me exactly what happened in the jungle that day? Maybe there’s something you don’t realize is important.”
“Yes, OK. I can do that.” Severine sat down on the couch, took one deep breath, then another. She looked around the chaos in the room and began to recount the afternoon in Mondulkiri.
*******
For some time, the only sound was the thwek-thwek of the machete as they moved farther into the grasping jungle. Rounding a blind corner, they came upon a small sunlit clearing, a deep inviting pool of water on the far end. Following Ben into the clearing, Severine looked up, relieved to see the cloudless blue sky above. The sunlit pool sparkled. A stream feeding the pool burbled over a short waterfall, its stones covered with green moss.
Ben said “OK, let’s take a break.”
“Thank God. I’m boiling.”
Ben smiled back at her, his dark eyes dancing. “I’d rather be hot than covered in bug bites. I don’t think you want malaria.”
