Phnom Penh Express

by Johan Smits

  “Hellooooo? Daaarling? You miss meeeee?” the voice says.

  Horrified, Billy immediately takes the phone away from his ear and looks at the small LCD display. ‘Lyda’, he reads.

  He hastily turns it off. He should never have given his number to that bargirl in Handsome Man. And he should never ever forget to silence his damn phone when on a secret mission.

  Billy clumsily stuffs his phone back into his pocket. The night guard keeps looking at him with a mixture of curiosity and sleepiness. The Cambodian man then turns and shuffles towards a small closet at the end of the room.

  Billy panics. His mind races. Shit shit shit... Agent Bauer’s phone never went off at such critical moments. Billy watches the guard reaching for something in the now open closet. It’s now or never, Billy thinks. I could knock the old guy out and escape. But before Billy can act, the guard swivels and points a bottle of Minéré water at him.

  “Monsieur, teuk seut?” he gestures, while miming drinking from the bottle.

  Billy doesn’t answer. He’s far too confused for that.

  “Teuk seut?” the guard tries again with a tired but friendly smile.

  The only words that form in Billy’s mind are ‘Abort Mission’. Then he takes a deep breath and finally manages a reply.

  “Er...no, ourkoun,” he thanks the man in his best Khmer. “Sorry! Water, hah hah...,” he points towards the now empty bucket with a forced grin.

  “Ot pang ha,” the guard smiles, waving away the incident while not seeming to question Billy’s unexplained presence at all.

  The guy must think I’m a guest of the people living upstairs, Billy speculates. Let’s get the hell out of here while I still can or before someone discovers the hole in the roof upstairs.

  “Okay...now I go...,” he says pointing at the front door.

  “Baat, baat,” the old man concurs and grabs his key ring before leading Billy to the front of the room.

  Six minutes later Billy is perched on the back of a motodop. The driver turns out to be the guy upon whom Billy unwittingly urinated. While recounting that disgusting misfortune to his passenger, the driver promises Billy that he would kill the bastard if he ever finds out who did it. Billy cautiously expresses his deep sympathy. Finally he arrives at the U.S. embassy.

  “At last, friendly territory,” Billy sighs and quickly disembarks.

  ***

  When Billy wakes the following day, it is already late morning. Last night’s exertions utterly exhausted him. He slowly gets up and takes his time showering and getting dressed. Then he has a large breakfast and after his third coffee starts writing up his taskforce’s first report. His evaluation of the mission is a mixed bag. The bug has been installed all right, but by now the old night guard must have found out that Billy had actually broken into the house rather than being invited. Fortunately, it was only the old duffer who clocked his face — so he should just lie low for the next couple of days and avoid Street 240. Not very practical, but doable — at least he could now listen in to goings-on inside that chocolate house.

  Billy finds the number of the SIM card he had bought for the listening device. He programmes it into his cellphone under the name ‘Charlie’ so that he can easily call it whenever he fancies. The time on his watch shows 3:17 PM. He dials Charlie’s number. After two tones a connection establishes and Billy hears some noises. A chair being moved...? Someone coughing — a man? Then nothing for a while. Billy keeps listening — there’s definitely a presence in the house. Then a loud exclamation he doesn’t understand — just a couple of words. Then more silence. Billy curses — he hadn’t considered that these terrorist bastards would speak in foreign tongues. How on earth could he have ignored this obvious fact? He concentrates again — more words.

  “Diamonds are a girl’s best friend, not a man’s...,” he hears someone speaking slowly.

  The voice continues: “What the hell! Another message?”

  Then he hears footsteps, a door being opened and the background drone of a car passing by, then a door slamming. He waits. There’s nothing but dead silence now. Billy switches off the phone.

  The Senior Intelligence Officer frowns. The man inside that house — could that have been that Phirun character, he wonders. Whoever it was, he was talking about diamonds, about a message... What else? He also said something in...what? Arabic? Belgian maybe? Which increased the possibility that it was that Phirun guy.

  He puts the phone down. Not too bad for a first call, he concludes. It had confirmed his suspicion that that place is part of the terrorist diamond network. And as for the bugging device, it seems to be functioning well. Next time he should record his call-in, Billy realises. Not only to gather evidence, but also so he can have any pesky hubbly-bubbly language translated. Billy decides that he will be calling Charlie at regular intervals over the next few days.

  He looks out of his office window and feels swelling determination. No sir, these foreign bastards ain’t gonna get away with this!

  Chapter TWENTY TWO

  MR VANAK’S INSTRUCTIONS yesterday were clear, the young man thinks, observing the building from across the road. A shop in Street 240 called The Chocolate House. The target: a barang male who will be working there alone. The job should be carried out crisp and clean, Mr Vanak stressed. The one special request: leave a note with an inscription in English on the body afterwards.

  Easy, Setha thinks. He pulls his baseball cap lower over his brow and readjusts his fake Ray-Bans. There’s no reason to delay it any longer, he decides. Just one final check; one last time. He touches the gun strapped to his chest under his jacket. He feels for the note stuffed in his back pocket. Setha speaks barely any English, let alone read or write it, apart from the alphabet drilled into his head at school, again and again. So Mr Vanak had to literally spell it out to him letter by letter over the phone. It had taken them almost twenty minutes before they were both satisfied that the text was correct: ‘PRECIOUS CHOCOLATES FROM BELGIUM ARE WORTH DYING FOR’.

  He looks at the boutique across the street. There can be no mistake about it. A large plastic signboard lies on the floor against the wall of the house. The big letters in Khmer as well as English confirm that this is indeed The Chocolate House. The sign hasn’t been installed yet, but so what? Maybe they are renovating or about to. Who cares?

  From where he’s sitting on his motorcycle across the road, Setha can see straight through the boutique’s glass double doors. The sun is still low, so there’s no distracting reflections yet. Inside he sees three tourists standing at a desk. They are counting dollar bills while the barang opposite them is tapping something into a calculator. The moment they leave I’m going in, Setha thinks. He’s done this several times before, but it’s still hard for him to control his nerves. Next week he will turn twenty-four and he’s determined to demand a pay rise from his employer, because two hundred dollars is not enough to save anything for his impending wedding. One of his friends gets fifty dollars more for similar jobs — and several bonus bags of rice each month.

  The boutique’s front doors open and the tourists walk out, each carrying a brown rectangular shopping bag. Setha lingers until he feels that no other visitors are coming and starts his motorcycle. He drives slowly across the road and stops right in front of the boutique. He leaves the engine ticking in neutral, strides up to the door, opens it, walks in, lets it swing close behind him and briskly heads for the man with the calculator who now looks up at him.

  “Mais enfin! No motodop drivers inside ze boutique! We will call you if we need you, okay?” he admonishes in an irritated tone.

  With his left hand Setha pulls a red-and-white chequered krama scarf across his face highwayman-style, while his right hand swiftly draws the gun from beneath his jacket and levels it at the foreigner’s head.

  “Merde...”

  Crimson blood splatters spurt almost simultaneously with the gunshot, staining the walls, ceiling and counter, as well as Setha himself, adding yet another primar
y colour to the already very colourful Couleurs d’Afrique. Before he registers the dull ‘thud’ of the body hitting the ground, Setha is already at the front door. Then he freezes.

  “Choi!” he curses in Khmer. The note! He hesitates for a beat, standing with his hand on the half-open door. Then he quickly pulls the paper from his back pocket, throws it onto the floor and runs outside.

  A few motodop drivers are staring in the boutique’s direction. None seem to be considering approaching, probably recognising trouble at work. Even if one of them was foolish enough to come over, he would be too late. Less than seven seconds after the gunshot, Setha is seated on his Honda Dream. He speeds off in second gear out of Street 240, hangs a left into Street 19 and another onto Norodom Boulevard.

  By the time the twenty-three-year-old killer has disposed of his blood-stained krama and arrived at busy Monivong Boulevard, the first curious motodop drivers and street vendors are carefully approaching the boutique.

  The murder caused some commotion in the usually peaceful street. The police, when they had finally arrived, had shown more interest in the boutique’s contents than the barang’s corpse. The victim was known as Sergio, a Frenchman with an Italian background, who had been running his Couleurs d’Afrique boutique for several years. Only in the early afternoon, after French embassy officials became involved and a reporter from The Cambodia Daily had arrived, was the murder scene cordoned off from multiple prying eyes.

  Meanwhile a little crowd of onlookers is nudging each other and watching the comings-and-goings. Among them a short, stocky Cambodian man is frowning while paying particular attention from near the back of the crowd. He curses quietly. He had been assigned to strike today and was waiting until noon, when the streets are relatively quiet with most having lunch. But this unexpected shooting — right next door to his target residence — was almost too much to believe. But his deadline is fixed; he’s got to do it today. Plans are already in motion; the other two are on stand-by, having secured a getaway car. The muscular man withdraws from the rabble and walks back to his motorcycle parked some fifty metres down the road. We’ll wait until afternoon, he thinks. Hopefully by then the attention will have started to die down. And if not, then things were going to be more complicated than planned.

  ***

  Inside Couleurs d’Afrique, the French embassy’s attaché is trying to wring information out of the man sitting before her without upsetting him further. This is not easy. He’s already sobbing.

  “So, Monsieur, could you please state your name again?” the lady asks gently.

  “Jacky...”

  “Yes?”

  “Jacky...”

  “Yes?”

  “Jacky Ouk...” the man mumbles into an unseen void gaping in front of him.

  “You are Cambodian-French, Monsieur Ouk?”

  “Yes...”

  “And what is... er... was your relationship to Mr ...,” she glances at her notebook, “... Sergio?”

  “He was my partner,” Jacky mumbles.

  “Thank you. Er... business partner or... er...?”

  “Both.”

  “Thank you,” she says, scribbling into her notebook. “You can be assured, Mr Ouk, that the French embassy will do anything it can to assist local police in finding the murderer. Do you have any idea who might be behind it? Did Sergio have any enemies? Forgive me for asking, but could it have been related to some kind of business dispute?”

  Jacky looks up at her with puffy red eyes.

  “Sergio wouldn’t harm even ze gecko. He was much loved by everybody.”

  “I see,” the lady replies, then hesitates. “But what about this?” she produces the written message. “It was found on the floor, and a witness, a street vendor, says the killer threw it in here when he was fleeing the boutique.”

  Jacky looks at it, initially uninterested, then reads it slowly, “precious chocolates from Belgium are worth dying for”.

  He looks up at the embassy woman.

  “What eez this...?”

  “We don’t know. The police are trying to find out. Nothing of value has been stolen — and then there’s this message. Off the record, it seems to indicate some sort of revenge motive.”

  Jacky exhales deeply and shakes his head.

  “Cannot be, cannot be... Not Sergio. It must be some orrible mistake... I don’t know, we should have never started zis business...” Tears well up in his eyes. “Excusez-moi,” he tells her, “I need ze petit break.” He departs, sniffing.

  The only person he could bear being with right now is Phirun next door. Jacky walks over to the adjacent house and knocks. The door is opened by a young man whose cheerful face fades the moment he recognises his visitor.

  “Jacky,” Phirun semi-whispers, stepping aside to let his neighbour enter.

  Jacky responds by hugging his friend and bursting into heaving sobs.

  Phirun closes the door and leads Jacky towards a chair.

  “I’m so sorry,” he says, feeling useless. “We’re all deeply shocked.” He gently squeezes the heartbroken man on the shoulder then reaches for a bottle of Armagnac from a closet and pours a glass. “Here, I’m sure you could use one of these.”

  Jacky, slumped in a chair, nods and downs the glass in one.

  “Another?” Phirun offers pouring a glass for himself.

  “Non, merci.” Jacky waves in what can only seem like a defeated gesture. “I still cannot believe it, you know,” he laments. “We were having breakfast together only this morning and now...”

  Phirun puts his hands on Jacky’s shoulders. “I know, I know,” is all he can manage at first. Then, “Do you have any idea who did this, Jacky?”

  “No. Nothing. Rien.”

  Both are silent for a minute, then Jacky says:

  “Apparently ze killer left ze message, ‘Chocolates from Belgium are to die for’ or something like that. Complètement crazy.”

  Phirun frowns, immediately worried. A message about Belgian chocolates to die for? What’s that all about? He knows Jacky better than he knew Sergio. Jacky is an honest businessman and so was Sergio, as far as he knew, but then, you never really know. Might it have been some dirty business feud?

  “Poor old Sergio,” Phirun says. “Please serve yourself, Jacky,” he gestures to the Armagnac. “And excuse me for a minute. I need to use the bathroom, I’ll be right back.”

  He moves through a narrow door at the far end of the room. It leads to a little outdoor courtyard where the alfresco toilets are.

  ***

  The muscular Cambodian and his two sturdy young male companions are sitting in a black Lexus with tinted windows, parked at the corner of Street 19 and 240. They are observing the chocolate shop house.

  “We go now, Sideth?” one of his companions, the driver, asks him.

  Sideth doesn’t answer but continues watching the house. The activity in front of the Couleurs d’Afrique boutique is dragging on, but at least this morning’s crowd has shrunk to a couple of people. He lifts his semi-automatic from his bag, cradling it affectionately, and double-checks that it’s loaded properly. Nobody outside can see what he’s doing in the car. A check of his breast pocket reassures him that the envelope containing the message is still there. He really hates this kind of thing — leaving messages in the heat of the action? What kind of postman bullshit is that? It just distracts him from the real job at hand. Can’t they just send an e-mail instead? He slides his sunglasses on and nods at the driver.

  “Go.”

  With a growl of its powerful engine, the large SUV snorts the short distance to the chocolate building where it screeches to a standstill. Sideth has already jumped out, wielding his gun, and is sprinting to the front door which he boots open with a firm side-kick of his right leg. The driver keeps the engine running, one foot on the clutch, the other on the gas while his companion in the car scans the street, loaded gun at the ready for anyone who wants to cause trouble. The rear passenger-side window facing the chocolate buil
ding is lowered. Mere seconds have passed since the car arrived. Inside the shop, Sideth is regarding a man in a chair who’s returning the uninvited look with surprise written all over his features.

  “Phirun?” Sydeth shouts.

  “Huh? Who are you?” answers Jacky, staring at the intruder in shades who had just booted the door in.

  Sideth, primed for decisive action, takes this as a “yes” and aims at Jacky’s chest.

  “Merde...”

  Three rapid gunshots leave the windows trembling, then Jacky is no more. Sideth swings around to make a hasty exit — but then suddenly remembers the piece of paper.

  “Shit!” he curses.

  With his free hand, he fumbles inside his breast pocket for the envelope. He briskly stoops and stuffs it inside Jacky’s bloodied shirt. Then he runs out so pumped with excess adrenaline he’s about to shoot anybody who might block his path. Without slowing he dives head-first into the waiting vehicle through its open window. While his partner in the back helps pull him in, the driver speeds off towards Norodom Boulevard, with Sideth’s legs still sticking out. By the time they reach the intersection, less than four seconds later, Sideth is sitting next to his partner, wiping dots of blood off his face.

  ***

  Phirun flushes the toilet, washes his hands and dries them thoroughly with a white towel. The moment he’s about to open the door, he hears three loud cracking sounds, like fireworks. He also feels a slight vibration in the metal of the doorknob. What the hell was that? he wonders, worrying that one of the chocolate-melting machines has just packed up. Or maybe the dehumidifier has broken. He paces towards his workplace and flings open the back door. Looking inside, he has an unobstructed view all the way through the glass doors onto the street out front. Just in time to notice a big black car speeding away. Then he looks down and gasps. Just a few metres from his feet, lifeless Jacky lies crooked in an unnatural position amid a spreading pool of blood.