by Kae Bell
From his position at the table, directly opposite from the country’s leader, Andrew watched the commotion, as the men discussed in increasingly loud tones what this interruption could mean.
The commotion ceased when the Prime Minister, still standing, raised his voice just above the volume of the room. “Enough." He spoke in Khmer, his tone clear. He banged his open palm, once, on the table, and repeated himself, loud enough to be heard above the anxious murmuring. A hush fell over the room.
All eyes were on the Prime Minister, who in turn stared at Andrew, his dark eyes fixed, his expression guarded.
He waved a dismissive hand twice at the table occupants, as if sweeping away a fruit fly. “Everyone, leave us,” the Prime Minister told his Ministers. They stood and filed out of the room, glancing at Andrew, some with hatred, some with fear, some simply with curiosity.
The Prime Minister motioned to the guard. “Bring this man to me.”
The guard man-handled Andrew toward the front of the room and the Prime Minister, shoving Andrew into an empty leather seat.
“Leave us,” the Prime Minister said to the guard and turned to Andrew, his hands clasped behind his back. His face showed no expression. He spoke in English.
“You come here...you break into my building, you disrupt my meeting…and you disrespect me in front of my men. These are unacceptable offenses.”
He tapped his finger on the table to each syllable as he repeated the word. "Unacceptable.” He continued, his voice calm and even.
“I know who you are. I know that you are American, that you work with the US Embassy. My people have been aware of your movements since you arrived to Phnom Penh several days ago.”
Andrew looked surprised, so the Prime Minister explained. “There is little I do not now know of in my country.”
“But sir, there is something you don’t know. Something that has been hidden from you, by people who oppose the country’s progress and direction, who want to turn back the clock, to expel the foreigners, to stop all progress, to close the doors and return to a dark past.”
The Prime Minister raised his voice, ever so slightly, the only sign of his rising irritation. “You spoke of Year Zero. What is the meaning of this?”
“There is a document, in my pocket. If you read it, perhaps it will make sense.”
The Prime Minister stared at Andrew without blinking. He showed no emotion and, worryingly to Andrew, no concern. Andrew did not think he was getting through. But he waited. He could think of nothing else to say.
The Prime Minister sat, thinking. After several minutes of silence, he approached Andrew and yanked the pages from Andrew’s breast pocket. He read quickly across the Khmer script then tossed the pages on the table.
“These are the ravings of a crazy person. A nobody.”
“Yes, but a crazy person with followers. I saw them myself. We have very little time. Sir, I need your help.”
The Prime Minister stepped to the long picture window, the bullet-proof glass offering a view of the well-lit courtyard and a single large mango tree, heavy with fruit. Beyond the courtyard, the lights of Phnom Penh lit the night sky.
“What is planned?” the Prime Minister asked.
Andrew walked him through what he knew of Hakk’s plans. The Manifesto had been vague, he explained, it rambled. They knew only the time and the day. Not where and not how. Not yet. But if they could prepare, Andrew explained, he believed they could stop it. Or at least blunt it.
As Andrew spoke, he saw a glimmer of acceptance in the Prime Minister’s face. Andrew pushed while he had an advantage, explaining what he would need from the Prime Minister.
The Prime Minister only half-listened as he looked out into the night. A fruit bat mad with hunger winged its way across the sky, its zigzag flight defying reason.
The Prime Minister had faith in his men, in their intelligence gathering and most of all, their loyalty. He doubted that anyone could stage an act of terrorism in his country, let alone a plan to disrupt the entire nation, without being caught and thwarted. It was unthinkable. And therefore, impossible.
The Prime Minister considered the loss of face that Andrew had inflicted on him. Once lost, face was not recovered. He pondered his next steps. A foreigner must not dictate policy nor be seen in a position of power. Not now. Not ever.
He chose the only course available to him. He turned to Andrew, his face a mixture of contempt and arrogance. “These are lies. Western conspiracies. Take your nonsense elsewhere. This will not happen.”
Before Andrew could react, the Prime Minister slammed his fist on the table and yelled “Guards!”
The door swung open but rather than a heavily-armed guard, the Prime Minister’s key aide rushed in, his eyes wide with fright. He held a cell phone in his shaking right hand, far in front of him. He spoke in Khmer, in unrestrained tones, not at all appropriate for speaking to the Prime Minister. But he could not help himself.
Andrew couldn’t decipher the words, but he could tell their meaning from the worried tone. Something was up.
The Prime Minister took the phone and said “Yes?” and listened.
Andrew watched the Prime Minister’s face as the caller spoke, the relaxing of his jaw, the loosening of his brow. Replacing the disbelief and disdain was worry. He listened for a few more moments, nodding his head as the person talked excitedly on the other end of the line. Then the click of disconnection.
The Prime Minister inhaled and placed his hands flat on the table.
“We have found a bomb.”
Andrew nodded “Where is it?”
“Outside of the Angkor complex. A truck went off the road. Some children found it in the jungle. It has a timer. It’s counting down.”
Chapter 38
A small room was allocated for planning. The wooden table in the center was cluttered with papers, articles and copies of Hakk’s Manifesto lay on the table, in Khmer, English and Chinese. A huge map of Cambodia was taped to the wall, the country’s major cities circled in black marker. A red ‘X’ marked the bridges in Phnom Penh. They had been highlighted and annotated. There were still unanswered questions.
Flint sat at the table, alternating between scratching a mosquito bite on her bare leg and taking notes on the yellow pad in front of her.
“Let’s go over it once more,” she said. She glanced at Andrew, who walked around the room looking stressed. He hadn’t shaved for a week. The large dark circles under his tired eyes made him look like a half-dead raccoon.
They reviewed the translated missive from Hakk.
Flint asked, “What did he hope to accomplish exactly?”
Andrew had been thinking about that constantly since he had left the jungle. Hakk had seemed so certain of himself, certain of the inexorable outcome, even in the face of his own demise. Stopping in front of the map on the wall, Andrew shared his thought with Flint.
“He's trying to break this country.”
“How do you mean?” Flint asked
“He's putting the pressure on. The terror from the emails, the bridges, the fear, the panic. This country is brittle, from its horrible history. After what? Forty, fifty years of war and internal strife, it can't absorb any more trauma. It has no flex left within it, no bend, no capacity for strain. One more war, one more coup or period of unrest or even uncertainty, and it will snap like a bad bone. Hakk was counting on that, the brittleness, the country at its limit. He wants to break the country’s collective will to survive. To make people give up. Succumb. If the foreigners leave, it will ruin people’s livelihood. It would be too much to take.”
Understanding flashed on Flint’s face as she shook her head in astonishment at a mind bent on destruction merely for destruction’s sake.
“Sick bastard. And here, I got this today. This is more of the same.” She gave Andrew Hakk’s latest email communication to the Ambassadors. It had been sent late Friday night, set on a timer to go after the bridges collapsed.
“You were wa
rned,” was the message the email contained. It had been sent to all the Embassies in Phnom Penh, to everyone from the Ambassador to the interns, dispatched automatically. Not surprisingly, on the heels of the bridge collapse, this message had created a flurry of international email communication, secure and not secure, from Embassy staff to their home country. Most embassies were closing on Monday while this matter was investigated.
Andrew’s phone rang and he stepped out of the room.
Flint doodled on the pages of the manifesto, drawing the DC skyline as she read again the musings of a mad man.
“Siem Reap is safe.” Andrew said when he returned to the room.
“That’s a relief. Pretty touch and go up there for a minute,” Flint said.
A US special-forces demolition team, flown in from parts undisclosed, was decommissioning the massive bomb in the jungle outside Siem Reap. Andrew understood from the amount of explosive inside it, it would have cratered the shabby little town.
Andrew shook his head as he stared at the map. He had tried to recreate from memory what he had seen in Hakk’s hut in the mountains.
“The thing is, I’m not so sure we’re out of the woods. I think he had a back up plan. That’s what he meant when he said there was no stopping, that it was already in motion. The bomb was just one part of it. All his men in the jungle, what’s their mission?”
Flint drew swift, straight lines on the blank paper as she spoke. “Smaller bombs? Light weaponry? Suicide vests? Tourists are sitting ducks, really, for the lone rogue warrior.” She tilted her head at Andrew. “The Agency would like to alert the public to the threat.”
Andrew turned to her. “It’s not gonna happen. The powers-that-be here want this contained, controlled. Kept quiet. We have permission to stop it, not advertise it. Too much at stake if the press gets a hold of it.”
Flint shook her head. “Bad decisions.”
“Well, it’s what we’ve got to work with.”
Andrew’s phone rang again. He looked at the number before he answered it. Not a number he recognized.
“Hello?” he said. The caller was female and frantic. Andrew looked relieved. Flint watched him.
“Thank God. Severine, where are you?”
“It’s a long story. I’m fine. I’m on the Mekong, heading south toward Phnom Penh.”
“Don’t come here. You can't get by. Hakk has blown up the bridges.”
“Who’s Hakk?”
“It doesn’t matter right now, I’ll explain later. Just, don’t come to Phnom Penh.”
He heard Severine turn and speak to someone beside her:
“He says we can't get through, the river is blocked.”
Andrew said, “Severine, listen. Go north. Go to the deepest point in the river and stay put. We'll send someone for you. Call me when you get through.”
“OK. We can do that. I’ll tell the others.” She clicked off.
Andrew wondered what others. He would ask her later.
The door of the room opened and a secretary pushed in a metal cart set with drinks and lunch. The cart was a mini-version of the street pushcarts that were ubiquitous in Phnom Penh, the Cambodian version of a food-truck, selling all manner of food and souvenirs.
The cart’s black wheels squeaked as they rolled over the linoleum. Settling the tray in the corner, the secretary bowed slightly and departed, closing the door behind her.
Flint stood and headed to the cart. She never ate on international flights and hadn’t had a decent meal for two days. Flint grabbed a sandwich from the stack, sniffed it and took a bite. She chewed, content.
Andrew walked up behind her. “What looks good?” he asked, eyeing the rectangular metal cart. The top shelf held a tray stacked high with triangular white-bread sandwiches, crusts cut off. The cart’s lower shelf was filled with soda cans, the brightly-colored aluminum cylinders packed in tight.
Andrew watched Flint standing by the cart, leaning her slim hip on the cart’s metal edge as she poked at the sandwiches and selected her next victim. She looked at Andrew as she chewed.
“It’d be nice to have lunch wheeled in everyday, huh? Right to your desk. Easy access,” she said.
Andrew nodded absently. Then struck by a thought, Andrew’s eyes grew wide. He grabbed Flint’s arm, squeezing harder than intended, and she flinched in both surprise and pain.
“Ouch!” Flint exclaimed.
“I got it!” Andrew said, more loudly than he needed to in the small room.
“Got what?” Flint asked, rubbing her arm.
“His plan. His back-up plan.”
Flint had heard Andrew crack cases wide open but she had never seen it in person. She watched him.
“Explain.”
“Tourists. Temples.” He slammed his hand against the map, to land on the red ‘X’ of Siem Reap. “Angkor Wat.”
Shock spread across Flint’s face, as she registered the magnitude of a terror attack on the country’s greatest temple, its source of pride, the sign of its greatness. The central attraction for tourists.
Andrew continued, "Every morning it’s packed solid with tourists, watching the dawn break over the temple’s spires. That’s his plan, to target those tourists, from all over the world. It will incite the fear and hysteria he’s been preaching."
Flint agreed. “If that’s true, if that’s his target, there will be nothing comparable left to see in this country. Tourism will die a sudden, ugly death.”
Andrew bolted from the room. “Not if I can help it.”
Chapter 39
Pchum Ben Day
In the darkness, the woman worked. Her hands, small and brown, spotted from years in the fields, scooped handful after handful of cooked white rice, sweet with coconut milk, from a large clay bowl, molding the rice into firm mounds. She lined them in tight rows on rectangular white platters and sprinkled these with sesame seeds. Finished, she surveyed her work. Satisfied, she wiped her hands on a red apron and prepared for the trip to feed her long dead ancestors.
*******
Alarm clocks sounded early on the Sunday morning. Tourists roused themselves and dressed, drank coffees and teas and wandered, half-awake, down from their hotel rooms into lobbies in guest houses across Siem Reap.
The buses began to arrive to the guest houses at 5:10 AM. They lined the streets and waited in the dark to take the sleepy sightseers on the short ride to Angkor Wat for sunrise. Sunrise was at 6:09 this morning.
Andrew had flown in from Phnom Penh overnight, stopping briefly by Severine’s apartment.
Now, he stood in front of the dark temple of Angkor Wat, waiting. A few ambitious tourists had already arrived, seeking the best view.
Andrew had memorized Hakk’s treatise Socheat had translated for him. Most of it made sense now, with what they knew, but one line of it niggled at him.
“Through the dead we give thanks and offer them our tomorrows.”
He was missing something. It was there in the shadows of consciousness. He nudged at it mentally like a loose tooth.
Buses arrived. Passengers debarked, jockeying for position by the wide moat below the temple. Those who arrived late would grumble in the back, straining their necks.
In the darkness, Andrew watched the tourists assemble into a shuffling crowd, waiting to be awed by this combination of man and nature, sun rising over ancient stone.
A small team of local military, courtesy of the Prime Minister, wandered through the growing crowd. They had been instructed to be unobtrusive, to avoid alarm or panic, and to follow Andrew’s lead. They glanced at Andrew now and again.
Behind the crowd, local vendors set up their pushcarts for the day’s trade, with guidebooks and temple replicas, wooden necklaces and carved stone elephants. Their carts were chock full of cheap merchandise ready for the tourist season.
These were Andrew’s main concern. Packed with heavy explosives, a pushcart could be a perfect weapon to decimate this assembled crowd. The military men walked by the vendors slowly,
suspicious of everyone, their bomb sniffing dogs snuffling along the ground, finding nothing.
Andrew walked along the line of carts that now encircled the tourists. In yesterday’s planning, they had considered banning the vendors today but decided that would tip their hand, signal whoever was orchestrating the coming destruction.
Andrew walked by the vendors, watching for shifty behavior, any sign of nerves. One vendor caught his attention, an anxious, emaciated man with a slim goatee tapping his foot and shifting left and right as he watched the temple in the growing light. Andrew approached him.
“Hey, buddy, got a light?” Andrew called out, as he stepped close to the man. The man jumped, surprised, his shoulders up, a reflex. He rummaged in his pockets. Sweat broke out on his brow.
Behind them, the sun cast deep orange rays, lighting up the sky. The pineapple-shaped cones stood in stark silhouette.
“No, no light, no smoke, sorry,” the man said, chewing on his lower lip, his eyes rolling into the back of his head. Andrew knew a junkie when he saw one. This guy had something to hide.
Without warning, Andrew toppled the man’s wooden pushcart, its contents spilling onto the dirt road. As the man complained loudly, staring at his livelihood strewn about in a broken mess, Andrew rummaged through the cart’s contents, looking for guns, a bomb, anything. But it was only worthless trinkets: Bracelets, temple replicas, and plastic Buddhas.
The assembled crowd was oblivious, only a few people glancing behind them at the minor commotion then turning back to watch the sun. As the sunlight brightened from orange to deep yellow, camera shutters clicked. The crowd murmured in awe.
Andrew stood, staring down at the mess he had made, while the vendor chided him in Khmer. The man’s friends approached, also vendors, cursing at Andrew for harassing a man sick with break bone fever. The undercover cops approached to disperse the growing group of disgruntled local vendors.
Andrew turned back to look at the temple and the massive crowd. How could he be so wrong? He had been certain the bomb would be concealed in one of the vendor carts lining the road. It was the simplest way for Hakk to inflict major damage, both immediate and long term. Andrew had warned the others to be on the look out for vendors: Flint was watching the US Embassy; Socheat was staged near Wat Phnom, his contacts throughout the countryside notified as well; the Prime Minister had staged his men throughout town. All eyes on the vendors, their carts bearing not only souvenirs and trinkets but destruction.
