by Johan Smits
Finally a bell rings and a few seconds later the Cambodian judge enters the courtroom. Order is called while the senior magistrate takes his place behind the desk and starts signing the judgement papers. The Colonel looks at his Cambodian defence lawyer who nods back at him reassuringly. The gesture does everything but reassure the Colonel. Then, all of a sudden, the judge calls for attention. He rearranges the documents in front of him, clears his throat and begins reading in Khmer. After a few sentences the Colonel hears his name being pronounced wrong, and recognises the French word ‘Belgique’.
“What the hell is he saying?” the Colonel demands from his lawyer.
“Don’t worry, just normal procedure. He’s reading the names of the parties and the charges.”
“Then when for fuck’s sake is he gonna announce his decision?” the Colonel frets.
“He’s now reading the reasons that determine the decision of the court on each of the counts, and then he’ll move on to the enacting terms of judgment. And then...”
“What? I’ve had it! When the hell is...”
The Colonel stops himself when he hears the courtroom stirring, but when he looks to the elevated bench the judge is still reading aloud. He glares, his eyes demanding, at his lawyer who instead looks down.
“What did he say?” the Colonel demands.
“Guilty on all counts,” is his brief, subdued reply. Suddenly the lawyer raises his hand to indicate the Colonel to be silent. “He’s reading the sentence,” he mumbles to the open-mouthed Colonel while concentrating on the judge’s words. Then he slowly lowers his hand and looks at his client, relief flooding his entire countenance.
“My god, you’re lucky!” he exclaims, grinning. The Colonel, however, cannot escape the impression that his lawyer is deriving some sick pleasure from all this. His eyes exude an odd mixture of satisfaction and contempt.
“Tell me, then!” the Colonel demands.
The lawyer talks clearly and slowly:
“You have just been sentenced to listen to eighteen hours of Cambodian karaoke music a day, for two full weeks,” he says, studying the Colonel’s bemused face with keen interest.
“Live!” he adds a sucker, sadistically delayed punch line that makes the Colonel wince with pain.
“NOOOO!!!” the Colonel screams out loud before he wakes up bathed in cold sweat.
***
What a shitty — shitty — shitty nightmare! Colonel Peeters thinks while brushing his teeth in his hotel bathroom. He’s still half-relieved and half-shocked. Must have been some Freudian thing, he imagines, considering how much he loathes Khmer karaoke. The Colonel has travelled a lot in his life, but never at any other place on this fucked-up planet had he endured such a horrifying noise. Like a litter of cats stamped to death in a set of bagpipes. But the singing is the worst aspect — he’d never imagined human beings were capable of producing such ghastly... there are no words capable of doing justice to the Colonel’s feelings about the local music.
The Americans used blaring heavy metal as part of the breaking down process used on the so-called unlawful combatants at Guantanamo Bay, but to the Colonel’s ears that would have been akin to a champagne and caviar classical music concert on Valentine’s Day, compared to the muck here. It’s clear that no Guantanamo prison interrogators ever served in Cambodia, otherwise they wouldn’t have wasted their time with that heavy metal tripe. Or was Khmer karaoke even a step too far for Gitmo?
He slurps some water from the tap and gurgles loudly while holding his head backwards, then spits toothpaste into the white marble sink. He looks at the time: 9:55 AM. How come he hasn’t received any news about the job yet? The elimination had been scheduled for yesterday and he should have gotten a confirmation by now. The Colonel is not a superstitious man but that nightmare left him with a creeping sense of foreboding.
He lowers his trousers and sits down on the toilet. A moment later he hears the sound of an object plunging into water, a familiar sound the Colonel had been accustomed to since toilet training with his dear, old mother. The plop of gravity, he contemplates. Such a strange force. Then his cellphone rings.
“Shit!” he curses, appropriately.
It’s lying just out of arm’s reach, forcing the Colonel to shuffle a few steps towards the end of the bathroom, dragging trousers around ankles. After he grabs his cell he shuffles back and sits down onto the seat again.
“Yeah!” he answers grumpily, panting with exertion. He listens intently to the voice a few miles into the ether.
“You WHAT?!” he shouts into the phone, followed by another plunge in the water beneath him. The Colonel’s angry barking rings loudly in the hotel’s bathroom.
***
Around the same time that Colonel Peeters is furiously flushing his toilet at the InterContinental, an enraged young woman of Middle Eastern origin is shouting angrily into her cellphone.
“You are telling me you shot the wrong guy? Are you kidding me?”
“No Miss Tza... I mean, no, miss. I mean, it wasn’t me; my contact got it wrong...”
“I don’t give a damn about your contact, I’m dealing with you! You’re telling me that you messed up, big time!” she yells in her cellphone, exasperated.
“How the hell can you fail a simple job like that?”
“It was a misunderstanding... You told us that the target would be working there alone, but there was someone else inside, too — a neighbour.”
“I don’t care if the damn Queen of England was inside, you messed up,” she hisses.
“The Queen of England...?” the voice on the other side mumbles, then adds hastily: “I can give you a discount, bong...”
Tzahala takes a deep breath, then speaks in an icy tone.
“I will have you discounted, you moron,” and smashes her phone against the wall. “Harah!”
Tzahala immediately regrets destroying her mobile and examines it to retrieve its SIM card. She should have known; if something needs doing properly, do it yourself. Damn it! she curses inwardly. Not only has she failed, but on top of that, she’s made a fool of herself towards that Colonel. Like a real amateur.
She places the SIM card into a spare, older model and switches it on. A few seconds later the connection symbol indicates reception.
What to do now? Maybe the Colonel will regard the killing as a warning? Shooting a neighbour as a warning — inside his chocolate place? No, it’s obvious this was a botched job.
Tzahala walks over to her living room desk and switches on her laptop with a sigh. The most useful thing she can occupy herself with at the moment, she supposes, is studying the Colonel’s profile over again. Maybe she missed something before, however unlikely that may be; some other, subtle clue. She sips hot, black coffee, perusing the file. She’s unlikely to find anything new, of course, she’s already studied it plenty of times before. She continues sipping coffee while she clicks on the link to the file’s addenda.
It contains a number of pictures of the Colonel taken over the years: one in his Belgian gendarmerie uniform; another of him shaking hands with some fat guy in Holland, identified as Edwin van der Gracht. Tzahala enlarges a portrait-style photo so that the Colonel’s face fills her screen. Not a bad-looking guy for such an incredible asshole, she admits to herself — if only he’d lose that stupid fascist moustache of his.
“Moustache...,” she jolts to a shock realisation: the man leering from her screen is the same guy she had admired across the patio at breakfast only two days ago.
“The hunk from The House!” she exclaims.
She puts down her coffee and studies the Colonel’s face again, perplexed. Yes, it’s definitely him, despite his changing his looks a little. Tzahala sits back and ponders what possible advantages this discovery could bring along. Now that she can identify him, maybe she can have him removed. But then she’d better do it herself, after yesterday’s mess-up. Moreover, he’ll be even more on his guard now, no doubt. Tzahala frowns, remaining sunk in thought for a wh
ile. She empties her coffee. Then suddenly, with a determined flourish, Tzahala snaps her laptop closed. She’s just settled on a plan of action.
***
The Colonel is still fuming. He’s briskly pacing his $800 suite, occasionally stopping to slam his fist onto a table or against a closet. That shitty nightmare was simply the start of what promised to be a bad day.
“Godvermiljaar!” he swears in his Antwerp dialect. He paid all that money to his local Muppet, only to hear that — “oh, sorry sir” — they had gone and hit the completely wrong target! The wretched imbeciles only popped one of the neighbours instead! What the hell...? There was no value for money in this monkey country — and there goes his steel reputation, the Colonel admits to himself. What now? He walks to the phone and dials room service.
“I asked for two double espressos half an hour ago, where the hell are they?” he growls into the phone, having never ordered them in the first place, and slams the receiver down.
By the time the coffees arrive, four minutes and seventeen seconds later — the Colonel timed it — he has made his decision. He wants to find out who his Israeli rivals are and get into talks with them; maybe they can strike a deal. He can only contact them indirectly, by leaving a message at The House, he concludes. He gulps down his espressos, grabs his car keys and leaves the suite.
By the time Colonel Peeters double-parks his landcruiser on the wrong side of the road in Street 240, opposite The House, the clear tropical morning is turning into a baking noon. He sits a couple of minutes in his car, scribbling a message on a piece of paper. He wants to keep his identity secret for now and hesitates before scrawling his mobile number on it. It’s a Cambodian cell number bought via punting some motodop driver five dollars. No way he can be traced via it, he reckons.
Satisfied, he gets out, walks straight into The House, up to the counter and calls over the guy who seems to be in charge.
“What’s your name?” he demands, neglecting to introduce himself.
“Sophat, sir. Would you like to order something?”
“No. I want you to give this note to your boss,” the Colonel tells him, handing over the piece of paper with a ten-dollar note folded into it.
“Oh, thank you, sir, but that’s not necessary,” the young Cambodian replies, refusing the money. Then suddenly he seems to remember something.
“Oh...! Excuse me, one moment, sir,” he exclaims. “I think someone already left a note for you.”
Not for the first time that morning, the Belgian is surprised.
“What do you mean?”
Young Sophat reaches behind the counter, grabs a sealed envelope and passes it to the Colonel. Stapled on it is a picture of Peeters’ face. It’s an old shot, but his moustache has been retouched out and more hair added, coloured light brown. The result is an uncanny resemblance to his present appearance.
“Who gave this to you?” the Colonel asks sharply, “your boss?”
“My boss? No, one of the newspaper kids from outside delivered it. He asked us to give it to you if you came here. There was a twenty-dollar note with it as well. I put it in the staff’s tip box.”
“I see,” the Colonel grumbles. He stuffs the envelope in his pocket, takes back his own message and quickly leaves the café. After re-entering his car he takes the envelope out and looks again at the picture of himself glued to it.
“Amai m’n kloten,” he mumbles in Flemish, expressing his surprise in vulgar vocabulary. “How the fuck did they find me?” He tears open the envelope and finds the same picture, but this time without any Photoshop adjustments. Instead, his moustache is smeared with white correctional fluid with a local telephone number written on it.
“Yeah, yeah, funny guys! You’re overdoing the moustache thing, you smartass bastards,” he says, but deep down he’s admitting defeat on this one. Those Israelis are smarter than he had given them credit for.
***
Despite all the day’s setbacks — starting with the vivid nightmare, the failed assassination attempt, the uncovering of his true identity — Colonel Peeters is surprised to find his mood lifting back at his hotel. He’s feeling surprisingly philosophical, too. This is not the first time in his life he’s had to deal with unexpected challenges. And he’s, as ever, determined to overcome them. No use in spending the evening feeling sorry for himself. Tomorrow will be crucial, he reckons.
After he got back he called the number edged on his Tippexed moustache and a woman’s voice had relayed instructions. They’d apparently be meeting tomorrow evening at 6 PM. She was pulling the strings and there’s not much he can do about it for now. What he needs tonight is something to cheer himself up, and the Colonel, a man of the world, knows very well where to go looking for it.
At seven he starts preparing for his night out. He undresses, then pours himself a tall glass of whisky with ice and steps into the shower. As the warm water gushes over his hairy back, the Colonel takes quick sips from the 30-year-old Glenmorangie, holding the glass in his left hand while soaping his crotch with the other. A few minutes later, still naked, he walks towards the room’s music system to which his iPod is connected. Something cheerful, he thinks, plumping for Shirley Bassey, while jettisoning an impressive fart. He downs his glass and crunches an ice cube between his molars. With music filling his suite, the Colonel starts singing along.
“Diamonds are forever...” He picks up his underwear.
“... they are all I need to please me...” He raises the rumpled boxers up to his nose and tentatively sniffs.
“... they can stimulate and tease me...” Still okay, he relents, and lugs them on.
When the chorus kicks in, he lets himself fall onto the king sized bed and listens to the lyrics until the song finishes.
“All right,” he says, “time to go.”
He puts on his black combat trousers, a fresh shirt and brown leather shoes. Moments later he’s standing on Monivong Boulevard in front of the big hotel, waiting for a passing motodop to pick him up. Despite his mistrust of the local drivers, he’s decided to keep a low profile out tonight and leave his big car at the hotel. After barely thirty seconds a young motorcycle driver stops next to him.
“Hello sir, moto?”
“Yeah, to Martini’s.”
“Martini’s baat!”
While the young Cambodian takes off with his hefty passenger balanced on the back, he glances up at the looming InterContinental. Expensive hotel, the driver thinks, he’ll charge this barang at least four dollars.
As they cruise through the humid Phnom Penh evening, Colonel Peeters’ thoughts flash back to his last visit to Martini’s two years ago. That night he’d returned home with two twenty-something sluts he’d banged for an hour in his hotel. Then he’d returned them to Martini’s from where he’d left with two more that had come personally recommended by the first pair. It had been a hectic but satisfying night’s work. He wonders if the establishment has changed much during his absence.
The Colonel realises too late he should have negotiated his driver’s fee in advance, but he’s determined to hang on to his good mood. After arriving in Street 95 he stuffs $2 in the breast pocket of his driver’s shirt — double the usual fee — and slaps him on the back, successfully discouraging him from asking for more.
The Colonel looks around him. Not much has changed, he thinks. The dirt road is still dirt, the whores still have dinner at makeshift noodle shacks, and the motodop drivers are half asleep with their feet up on their handlebars. Places like this belong in West Africa, he thinks, not Southeast Asia. Approaching the wide-open entrance, he fails to notice the motorcycle bearing a scantily dressed Cambodian that has followed him from his hotel.
***
Merrilee climbs off the back of the motorcycle. She knows she has to be careful. Not because of the Colonel, but of the girls inside Martini’s. Her appearance has already drawn an unusual amount of attention — and the girls are territorial. Even dressed modestly, Merrilee makes heads turn,
but now, in an ultra miniskirt beneath just a slip of blouse, she stands out more than a Las Vegas billboard in a Siberian desert. Despite being unaccustomed to these damn high heels, when Merrilee strides past the herd of waiting motodop drivers she radiates the overbearing confidence of a die-hard hooker — or an overpaid foreign aid worker.
She passes through the entrance, a wide passage lined with fast-food stalls, and arrives in the open-air beer hall. Dozens of plastic tables and chairs are filled with mostly western male tourists and Asian businessmen accompanied by hordes of thin Cambodian and Vietnamese girls. A 120-inch projector screen is showing Bruce Willis save the world but the soundtrack is overpowered by Beyoncé’s Crazy in Love blasting from the music system’s speakers. A quarter of the male patrons are already eyeing up the spectacular newcomer; the other three-quarters haven’t noticed her yet, still engrossed in large pitchers of Angkor beer and stilted conversation with their newly acquired fiancées.
Merrilee feels the cold looks emanating from some of the regular whores, who smell competition. She ignores the men and walks over to where more food stalls are serving a mix of western grub and Asian stir-fries. After finding a small table with only one chair, she sits down and studies the sparse menu at length. Her fair-weather admirers gradually lose interest and, to Merrilee’s relief, their attention flows back to the local girlfriends-to-be.
She orders a simple noodle dish with fried strips of beef and a Coke. She’s already spotted the Colonel sitting some twenty metres away in the roof-covered area. He’s groping a girl while sipping from a mug of beer and watching a game of pool. When Merrilee’s dish arrives she starts eating the noodles with a pair of chopsticks and considers her strategy for the night.
If she doesn’t want to create a scene, she’ll have to pay off some of the girls to allow her access to the Colonel. As long as she makes it clear to them that she’s only after him and not interested in establishing a patch for herself here, she should be fine. As for the Colonel, she’ll have to be crude. From what she read, he’s got an insatiable preference for younger girls — but age and experience bring something else to the grotty, cigarette-ashed table. Plus, she’s got the advantage of undeniably better looks.
