The Deceivers

by Harold Robbins

  “Nol, there’s another point, too, one that you must have some knowledge of. A forger could not have made a precise duplicate of the Siva from photographs.”

  He met my statement with an impassive face.

  “You know what I mean?” I asked. “It’s not possible for someone to make an exact duplicate that would get by experts without examining the real Siva at great length. Don’t you agree? The forgery had to be perfect, not varying in even the tiniest detail.”

  No change in his stoic features. I hated backing him into a corner.

  “Nol, I don’t see how the piece could be duplicated without the forger having access to the piece in the museum. I can’t see the person just working from photographs or dropping by once in a while to get a passing look. Unless someone in the museum is the forger.”

  That thought just struck me, but I had no reason to say it.

  He pursed his lips as we walked in silence to the main gate.

  When we stopped in front of the entrance, I gave him a hug. “I’m sorry. I think I’ve inadvertently brought some bad things into your life.”

  “Your intent is to help my country. I understand that.” He looked around again before he spoke. “I can recommend a guide for your visit to Angkor.”

  “That would be nice.”

  “Bourey.” He spelled it for me and pronounced it boo ree.

  “It would be better if you did not mention this to others. It would not be proper for a museum employee to recommend a guide. You understand? Mention it to no one.”

  I understood from his confidential tone that keeping the name to myself had nothing to do with museum rules, but I kept my face blank.

  As I was walking away, he spoke my name softly.

  “Do you recall seeing a sword in a glass case in the museum?”

  “Yes, I think so.”

  “It’s an executioner’s sword,” he said. “Do you know about srangapen?”

  I shook my head. “I’ve never heard the word.”

  “The traditional Khmer execution involved a ceremonial dance performed by the executioner. We call it srangapen. The victim would be blindfolded and forced to kneel beside an open pit. The executioner would dance beside him, shuffling his feet so that the victim knew exactly where he was at and knew that as long as the dance went on, he would not be killed. As the victim followed the movements with his ears, believing he was safe for the moment because the dance was still going on, another executioner chopped off his head.”

  The curator gave me a sad, lonely look.

  “That is often how it is in my country. The blow often comes from an unexpected direction when you believe things are safe.”

  I nodded my thanks and left.

  The story gave me the willies. And I felt sorry for Nol. I lived in a country where I could travel over three thousand miles coast to coast and not have to worry about anything except the price of gas and whether the nearest fast-food restaurant still used trans fats. He probably didn’t know when he arrived at work that morning whether there would be political upheaval by lunchtime.

  The story about the sword had been a warning, of course. A warning about whom? Chantrea had introduced us. Nol might know that Prince Ranar had me watched. He might also have been ordered to report our museum discussion to Ranar. And Nol had more to say. He just wasn’t ready to say it.

  I wondered what piece Bourey would add to the puzzle.

  19

  I took a quick shower to wash off some of the day’s heat, then had something to eat. Too antsy to sit still, I decided to pay a visit to the city’s most famous location for forgeries.

  I felt pressured to get information for Ranar. So far all I had gotten from him was money to cover my expenses. Time was running out and I needed some solid facts and a progress payment.

  The Russian Market, properly called the Toul Tom Pong, was located away from usual tourist areas but still attracted plenty of tourists. At least that’s what my guidebook said.

  I got instructions from Pho, the concierge. It turned out Sinn’s wasn’t in the market, but nearby. He offered to get a regular taxi for me. This time I let him do it. I’d already told Ranar I was going to check out the market.

  I slipped a twenty-dollar bill into his hand. “Tell the taxi driver to let me off at the main entrance to the market. I’ll get to Sinn’s myself. Pho, when I take a taxi, I want to make sure that the driver is reliable and discreet. Sometimes business competitors like to know where I go and I don’t want them to.”

  Pho gave me a knowing nod as I followed him outside. Three taxi drivers were waiting. He bypassed the first two and took me to the third one.

  “This driver is more honest than those two,” he whispered. “His name is Samnang. He speaks some English.”

  He spoke to Samnang in Cambodian, then said to me, “I have made sure the fare is arranged. You can pay him as little as two dollars, but if you feel he warrants it, give him more.”

  My driver seemed like a likable fellow with a nice smile as he weaved through the heavily congested traffic of cars, motos, and bicycles with more caution than other drivers I’d seen.

  We headed south on Monivong Boulevard away from the downtown business area and into more residential and industrial parts of the city. He took a turn on Mao Tse-tung Boulevard and down a dusty, potholed street to the market.

  The main building was an exotic temple-looking dome with lower wings extending out. An array of open shops under umbrellas near the main entrance crowded the street like jungle foliage.

  I asked Samnang if he wouldn’t mind picking me up in an hour. I figured that would give me plenty of time to check out the market. To make sure he came back, I gave him ten dollars and told him he’d get another ten.

  The covered market was larger than I expected. The interior had long rows of stalls, easily over a hundred. The plan of organization appeared to be chaos, though major merchandise categories—food, motorcycle parts, clothes, stoneware, and porcelain—were generally grouped together.

  Kirk was right about the variety. You could find everything there: electronic goods, clothes, shoes, jewelry, silks, handbags, woodcarvings, CDs, DVDs, antiques, pottery. Some stalls sold fake items but you could also find real designer brand names that cost a fraction of what you’d pay in department stores because the items had flaws, some very minor.

  I passed by one stall that had jars and jars of weird-looking liquids with unidentifiable objects in them, no doubt some medicinal herb concoctions, some of which looked pretty disgusting. Strange odors hit my nostrils as I walked by the place.

  Tourists crowded everywhere, bargaining on everything. It was considered a mandatory thing to do at the stalls. You never paid the full price for anything and the people who were good at it were usually more vocal and persuasive. The thought of culture-ugly Bullock haggling with these poor people was a disgusting image.

  I passed through several antiquity stalls that sold fakes. It was obvious tourist junk, nothing good enough to tempt me to leave my name and hotel number. At the last stall, the finishes on several of the pieces still looked fresh and too clean, as if they had recently been painted despite the sign that said “Antiquities.” Trying to be discreet, I picked up a Buddha and carefully scratched my fingernail on the finish when the shopkeeper wasn’t looking. The paint came right off.

  Amazing how easily you could fool an unsuspecting tourist who didn’t know anything about art. They could buy what was presented as a five-hundred-year-old sandstone Buddha, with a written guarantee of authenticity, only to find out later it had been made only weeks before.

  The shopkeeper gave me several “hellos” when he finished selling a Buddha to a tourist.

  “I’m looking for a real antique, not tourist stuff.”

  He stared at me as if I had said something insulting. “All pieces real,” he said in broken English.

  “Do you have something really special?”

  He bobbed his head and picked up a bronze statue with a
greenish-brown patina. “This special. Very old.”

  I controlled myself from telling him it was an obvious fake. He was lying, of course, thinking I was just an innocent tourist who knew nothing about antiques, but it was all a game and it would be rude for me to have said so.

  He had picked up the piece I’d scratched.

  “For you, two hundred.”

  “No, I’d like something really old.”

  He had some good copies of Khmer antiquities, but nothing that pinged real to me. I was just testing the waters, to see if he’d reach behind the counter and pull out an authentic artifact.

  He shook his head and insisted that the item he had in his hand was a genuine antiquity.

  I had read that art dealers in Cambodia were starting to be prosecuted by the government and the police, so some of them were being more careful of what they sold and to whom. Or maybe he didn’t really have any real valuable pieces.

  I thanked him and moved on. I went out an exit and onto the street. According to Pho’s instructions, Sinn’s shop should be across the street and down less than a block. Ahead I saw two familiar figures. I quickly veered around a shop that sold necklaces made out of wood. Hiding behind a corner of the canvas overhang, I took another look.

  Kirk and Bullock. My new lover and a scummy crook. They were standing on the sidewalk in front of a shop. I could see faded green paint on a sign advertising the shop as Sinn’s.

  My nerves went on fire. That miserable bastard. Kirk told me that he had to leave town early to disarm a land mine halfway to Angkor.

  What a fraud. He’d shown contempt for Bullock at the Foreign Correspondents’ Club but here they were, chatting away like old pals.

  Bullock walked away, going down the street away from me, while Kirk got into a big white SUV parked at the curb and drove off.

  I waited a moment, shaking my head at the old woman running the shop. I left her a dollar for taking up space for a moment and headed for Sinn’s shop under the theory that the best time to visit the shop was right now when I knew people I didn’t want to run into weren’t there.

  My intuition was right about Kirk. I couldn’t trust him. My temper was high enough that I must have had steam coming out my ears as I thought about Kirk. What kind of game was he playing? I knew it had to be dirty if it involved Bullock.

  Was it bad karma or what? I wasn’t a bad person but lately it seemed like I was attracting the wrong people. Maybe I deserved it, like water seeking its own level, but I couldn’t think of a reason why.

  Sinn’s store looked like the other storefront shops—a big front window too dusty and too buggy to see into the dimly lit interior. I entered, setting off a jangling bell attached to the door. The place had the distinctive smell of burnt marijuana.

  A woman making thumping noises as she walked came out of the curtained opening to the back, smoking a cigar.

  Sinn, I presumed, an observation aided by the fact a black and white picture of her standing next to a Cambodian notable—politician, king, or whoever—was prominently displayed on the counter.

  She had stumps ending at the knees with prostheses for legs. A land mine victim.

  The “cigar,” which looked like an awkwardly rolled wad of pot, added to the pot smell in the room. Hopefully the marijuana helped whatever pain she endured.

  Her English was as nonexistent as my Cambodian but we found common ground with hand signals and facial signals. I noticed her French was slightly better than mine.

  She thought I was a tourist and immediately began showing me souvenirs. I kept trying to convey the impression that I was a clueless American with too much money and it seemed to work because she finally brought something from under the counter that pinged as the real McCoy.

  She laid a pretty battered, chipped, and broken sandstone Buddha about four inches tall on the counter. I examined it. I had a feeling that it was real, centuries old, but not a very valuable piece. It was neither in good condition nor did it demonstrate fine craftsmanship. The only thing it had going for it was old age. I wouldn’t have paid more than a couple hundred for the piece even if I could have gotten it out of the country. But I had established a major point: she dealt with antiquities. Now the question was whether she had something of museum quality.

  I shook my head and got across again that I wanted a finer piece. Finally, I cut to the chase. Taking a hotel notepad out of my handbag, I wrote down $10,000.

  She looked at the figure and back at me and disappeared into the back room much faster than anyone on poor quality prosthetics should have been able to move.

  She came back with a small bundle wrapped in newspaper. She laid it on the counter and carefully unwrapped a small piece of sandstone. I froze. Like the piece Sammy showed me, it was a bas-relief of a scene from Hindu mythology—the god Vishnu with the celestial nymphs called Apsarases.

  “Twenty thousand American.”

  That came from her in perfect English.

  I took the magnifying glass from my purse. “I need to look at it.”

  The lighting was bad, but I was only looking for one thing and I found it. The half moon mark.

  The piece was a fraud, made by the same artist who had made the Apsaras piece Sammy had in New York and who was suspected of making the Siva that went for millions at auction.

  “Twenty thousand American,” she said, again.

  “Yes, I heard you.” I knew she would take ten, probably even less. She had to know it was a fake. A marvelous one, but a reproduction nonetheless.

  I looked up at the woman. She saw through my facade and read me right—I wasn’t really a buyer. I had been putting her on. Her eyes narrowed, her lips had tightened. She looked meaner than a Rottweiler whose bone I’d just grabbed.

  Panic hit me. What was I doing? I finally stumbled onto something important, something I could report to Ranar, and I felt like a scared kid. I had to get out of there.

  I hurried out the door. I stopped and snapped back at her, “It’s a fake.”

  “Of course it is,” a voice behind me said.

  I gasped and spun around.

  Bullock.

  * * *

  WHAT A SHIT. I awoke in the middle of the night and laid in bed thinking about that jerk. Kirk, not Bullock. Bullock wasn’t human enough to be called a shit. I nearly passed out when I ran into Bullock holding a cup of iced coffee outside the shop. I left him leering—not grinning—at me as I dashed around him.

  No, it was Kirk on my mind. Damn him. I thought I had found an ally, someone I could trust and who was tough and street-smart and was good-looking and sexy on top of that.

  Should I tell Ranar about the fake piece at the shop? I realized the woman wasn’t violating any laws—there was no law against selling a fake as a fake and I suppose in Cambodia it’s buyer beware—no one’s going to have sympathy if you buy a fake thinking you’re robbing the country of a priceless antiquity. But there certainly was a connection to the New York sale.

  I decided to keep the information under wraps until I had resolved in my mind that Ranar could be trusted.

  It would be nice to find someone in the country who I could trust.

  20

  An official car with two Culture Ministry security officers was waiting for Rim Nol when he came out of the Killing Fields main gate after his shift.

  He kept his features inexpressive as he obeyed the officer’s command and got in the back of the car.

  “Where am I being taken?” he asked.

  “Shut up.”

  The command was spoken without malice or even irritation and he accepted it without anger, just as he accepted without complaint what he thought to be his detainment, if not arrest.

  When they were near the river on the outskirts of the capital, Nol realized where he was being taken and confirmed his suspicion of who had commanded his presence. He had attended a reception at the sprawling palatial mansion and on several occasions had delivered museum documents.

  It was the home o
f Prince Ranar. He had an official office at the ministry building but preferred working out of the comfortable, climate-controlled atmosphere of his home.

  The two officers escorted Nol into the house and to the reception area outside Ranar’s office. Nol sat for an hour until the prince was ready to see him. It occurred to him that the wait might have been designed to make him nervous and more eager to please when questioned.

  When he entered the office, Ranar gestured at a cold pitcher of mango juice, but Nol smiled politely and shook his head. His mouth was dry but he was afraid his hands would shake if he held a glass.

  “Tell me everything you and the American woman discussed at the museum,” Ranar said.

  Nol started to speak and Ranar held up his hand to stop him.

  “Also tell me why she met you at Choeung Ek. And what was said there.”

  * * *

  CHANTREA ENJOYED HERSELF in the pool at Ranar’s villa while Nol was being questioned. She swam naked, bathing in the cool, sweet waters in the atrium courtyard. She loved the tropical paradise Ranar had constructed in the center of his residential compound—with a domed, glass roof and temperature-controlled climate, the atmosphere was pure, bugless, and serenely pleasant. Best of all, Ranar’s wife stayed in another section of the residence.

  When she saw Ranar come into the atrium Chantrea leisurely swam to him. She stepped out of the pool, unashamed of her nakedness. Almost forty years old, her body was still firm and sensuous.

  Ranar had seen her naked before but his eyes still feasted on her body. He pulled her toward him and kissed her on the mouth, tenderly at first, then with fiery passion.

  “You have a very beautiful body. You know that, don’t you?” he said huskily.

  “Yes, I do.” She lightly toweled off as Ranar got out of his expensive clothes, dropping them at his feet for the servants to pick up later. “So what did Rim Nol have to say?”

  “The woman was curious. She asked some interesting questions.”

  “Like?”