Impact

by Douglas Preston

  He shook his head. “I’ve got to finish this data.”

  “How’s it going?”

  “It’s a number grind. I’ve been spending all my time on gamma rays.”

  “Progress?”

  Corso glanced at the open door and she got the message, reached out and closed it.

  “A little. I’m pretty sure whatever it is is on the surface somewhere. The periodicity is just too close to the planet’s rotation to be otherwise. I’ve been combing through the images, trying to find some visual artifact that might correspond to the gamma ray emitter. Mars is a big place and we’ve got over four hundred thousand high-res photos. Needle in a haystack.”

  She heaved herself up and Corso watched her stretch, her shirt riding up, exposing her flat belly. A very graphic memory of their night together flashed into his mind.

  “If not lunch,” she said, tossing her hair, “then how about dinner?”

  “With pleasure.”

  “The pleasure will be mine,” she said.

  17

  Ford pulled the Land Cruiser up next to a row of battered motorbikes and eyed the hand-painted sign above the door of the small government office. In French and Khmer, the sign identified it as the Office of the Sub-Councilman of the District of Kampong Krabey, Commune of Svay Por. Ford stepped out into the heat, so great it rose in sheets around him, distorting the air.

  “God help us,” said Khon, squinting at the shabby, cinder block building. “I hope you brought a lot of dollars.”

  Ford patted his pocket.

  They knocked on the wooden door. A voice called them in. The sub-councilman’s office consisted of a single room, with cement walls and floor, freshly whitewashed, with a desk in the middle, facing the door, and two secretaries’ desks flanking either side. Two metal chairs were placed in rigid formality in front of the desk. A back door led to an outhouse behind. The room stank of cigarettes.

  The sub-councilman, a handsome man with a scar on his face, rose with a huge smile, displaying the biggest, whitest rack of teeth Ford had ever seen, which contrasted sharply with the man’s olive drab shirt, sagging blue pants, and flip-flops. His neck was thick and fleshy, his face a shining mask of good cheer.

  “Welcome! Welcome!” the councilman cried in English, his arms extended. His face wore an expression that would not have been out of place on someone who had just won the lottery. And maybe he had, thought Ford, thinking of the inevitable bribes to come.

  Khon made an elaborate greeting in Khmer. Ford remained silent, thinking it best, as he usually did, to disguise his knowledge of the language.

  “We speak English!” the man cried. “Sit down, please, my special friends!”

  Ford and Khon seated themselves in the hard metal chairs.

  “Hre min gnam sa!” The man screeched at one of his secretaries, who leapt up and rushed out, bowing twice as she passed.

  “It is nice day, yes?” said the man, with another smile, folding his hands in front of him. Ford noticed he was missing both his thumbs.

  “Very,” said Khon.

  “Very health here, in Kampong Krabey.”

  “It’s quite healthy here,” said Khon. “I noticed right away that you have fucking good air.”

  “Good air! Kampong Krabey District, good!”

  Ford and Khon smiled, nodded agreeably.

  The secretary came back, carrying three coconuts, their tops lopped off by a machete, straws stuck in them.

  “Please!” said the official. They drank the coconut milk, which was still warm from hanging on the tree. Ford thought he had never tasted anything quite so good.

  “Excellent,” said Khon. “What fine hospitality you offer us in the Kampong Krabey District.”

  “Best coconut!” the man cried, sucking his so vigorously the straw made a gurgling sound. He thumped the empty husk down on the desk and belched. “What you need, friend?” the man asked, spreading his hands. “I give you anything.”

  “This is Mr. Kirk Mandrake,” Khon said, “and he is an adventure tourist. I am Khon, his interpreter.”

  “Aveentah touist!” the official repeated, with a vigorous nod, clearly having no idea what it meant. “Good!”

  “He wants to visit a ruined temple known as Nokor Pheas.”

  “I not know this temple.”

  “It’s very deep in the jungle.”

  “Where is temple? In Kampong Krabey District?”

  “No. It’s beyond the district. We have to travel northeast through your district to get there.”

  The smile on his face cooled. “Beyond my district, nothing! Nobody! No temple!”

  Khon rose and unrolled a map on the official’s desk. “The temple is here, in the Phnom Ngue hills.”

  Now the smile vanished completely. “That is bad area. Very bad.”

  “My client, Mr. Mandrake, wishes to see the temple.”

  “You cannot go there. Too dangerous.”

  Khon went on as if he hadn’t heard the official. “Mr. Mandrake will pay well for the permit. He also needs your help in marking the trails on our map. And of course we would wish to avoid land mines. You know the district and you have the land mine clearance maps.”

  “Too dangerous. I speak Khmer, so you understand. That okay, Mr. Mandrake, if I speak Khmer now?” Another brilliant smile.

  “Of course.”

  He began speaking in Khmer and Ford listened closely. “Are you crazy?” the official said. “That area is infested with Khmer Rouge. They’re just bandits now, gem smuggling and kidnapping for ransom. If they got their hands on your client, it would be a huge problem for me. You understand?”

  “I understand,” said Khon, responding in Khmer. “But my client is very anxious to see this ruin. He came all the way to Cambodia just for this. We’ll be in and out—no lingering. Believe me, I know what I’m doing. I’ve guided people like him before. Just last month, I took some Americans to Banteay Chhmar.”

  “I cannot allow it.”

  “He will pay you well.”

  The official spread his hands. “What good is his money if I have to deal with a kidnapping? Of an American, no less? What would happen to my position here? The district is peaceful now, no problems, everyone’s happy. It wasn’t always like this, you know.”

  “Perhaps a large amount of money will compensate for the inconvenience.”

  There was a pause. “How much?”

  “A hundred dollars.”

  The official threw up his hands. “Are you joking? Make it a thousand.”

  “A thousand? I will consult with my client.”

  Khon turned to Ford and said in English, “The permit is a thousand dollars.”

  Ford frowned. “That’s a lot of money.”

  “Yes, but . . .” Khon shrugged.

  Ford frowned, screwed up his brow, then nodded sharply. “All right. I’ll pay.”

  The official piped up in Khmer, “And then one hundred dollars for access to the land mine clearance maps!”

  Khon turned. “One hundred dollars more? Now you’re the one who’s joking!”

  “Fifty then.”

  Khon spoke to Ford. “And another fifty dollars for the maps.”

  “What about the motorbikes? We need motorbikes,” Ford said, feigning anger. “How much more is this going to cost?”

  The haggling went on for another fifteen minutes, and finally it was done. One thousand, one hundred and forty dollars for the permit, maps, the rental of two motorbikes, gas, a few provisions, and safekeeping of the Land Cruiser while they were gone. Ford removed the money and gave it to the councilman, who took it with both hands, reverently, smiling whitely, and locked it in his desk.

  Ford and Khon went outside and sat down in the shade of a jackfruit tree, awaiting the arrival of the rental motorbikes from a nearby village.

  “You told me to bring five thousand dollars,” said Ford. “That poor fellow had no idea what we were willing to pay.”

  “That man just earned two y
ears’ salary. He’s happy, we’re happy—why question the generosity of the gods?”

  With a blatting sound, two motorbikes ridden by skinny teenagers arrived and wheezed and coughed to a stop.

  Ford stared at the ancient bikes, held together with gaffing tape and baling wire. One had a bamboo cage rack strapped to the back, fouled with clots and streaks of dried pig’s blood. “You’ve got to be kidding me.”

  Khon laughed. “What were you expecting, Harleys?”

  18

  The blue hills in the distance were the first thing Ford noticed as the trail opened into a small clearing. For the past five hours, they had been threading a web of jungle trails and he was exhausted, his bones rattled loose. He halted his bike and shut off the engine as Khon pulled up alongside. He watched the Cambodian gingerly remove the map from his backpack and unfold it, but despite all his care it was beginning to fall apart at the seams from humidity and use. Khon squinted at the map through his thick glasses, then looked up. “Those are the Phnom Ngue hills, and behind them the mountains along the Thai frontier.”

  “Man, it’s hot. How do you do it, Khon?”

  “Do what?”

  “Stay so cool, so well-pressed.”

  “One must keep up appearances,” he said, folding up the map with his plump, manicured fingers. “The village of Trey Nhor lies at the base of those hills. That’s the final outpost of Cambodian sovereignty. After that—no-man’s-land.”

  Ford nodded. He dabbed the sweat off his face and wiped his hands, threw his leg over the bike, fired up the tinny engine, goosed the throttle, and they set off once again, slowly bumping and weaving along the rutted trail. Over the next few kilometers they passed through several hamlets—a cluster of thatched houses on stilts, a water buffalo pulling a cart, children reciting loudly in unison in a thatched school hut—and then the trail rose to higher ground. A ridge loomed in the distance, smoke filtering up through the treetops.

  “Trey Nhor,” said Khon.

  They drove through the forest, the whining sound of the motorbike engines like a swarm of mosquitoes. Ford felt grateful for the breeze, even if it was hardly cooling. In a few kilometers the huts of the village appeared, scattered among giant fromager trees with ribbed trunks and roots that crawled over the ground like snakes. A moment later they came into a dirt plaza, surrounded by bamboo shelters with thatched roofs. A cluster of ancestor poles stood in the center of the plaza, like a group of skinny demons. Ford gazed around; the village appeared to be empty.

  They parked their bikes, kicked down the stands, and dismounted. All around the tiny clearing stood the immense, sighing forest, the human presence almost lost among the trees.

  “Where is everybody?” Ford asked.

  “Looks like they ran away. All but one.” Khon nodded toward a shelter, and Ford could make out a wizened woman inside, sitting on a woven mat. Khon pulled a bag of candy out of his pack and they walked over. “This area was hit pretty hard during the Killing Fields,” Khon said, “and they’re still afraid of strangers.”

  “Ask her about trails into the Phnom Ngue hills.”

  She seemed more ancient than a person could be and still be alive, a rack of bones covered with loose, wrinkled skin. And yet she was remarkably vivacious. Sitting cross-legged on a mat, she smoked the bitter end of a cheroot and grinned at Ford, exposing a single tooth. Khon offered her the open bag of candy and she dipped her hand in, removing at least half of it in a massive, clawlike grip.

  Khon spoke to the woman in dialect. She answered animatedly, her head nodding vigorously, boney fingers gesturing and pointing.

  “She says we better not go in there.”

  “Tell her we’re going and we need her help.”

  Khon spoke to the woman at length. “She says there’s a Buddhist monastery about two kilometers north of here, reachable on foot only. The monks, she says, are the eyes and ears of the forest. We should go there first, and they’ll show us the way. She’ll take care of our motorbikes for the rest of that candy.”

  The trail ascended through a grove of crooked jackfruit trees and climbed a heavily forested ridge. The heat was so intense Ford could feel it entering his lungs with every breath. After half an hour they came to a ruined wall of giant laterite blocks, tangled with lianas, with an ancient staircase leading up the side of a hill. The climbed it and at the top arrived at a grassy area littered with half-buried blocks; beyond, a quincunx of broken towers pushed up from the clinging jungle, each tower displaying the four faces of Vishnu gazing in the cardinal directions. An ancient Khmer temple.

  In the middle of the ruins, in a grassy clearing, stood the bombed-out shell of a much more recent Buddhist monastery. Roofless, its ragged stone walls were silhouetted against the sky. Beyond, Ford could see the gilded towers of stupas, or tombs, rising above the foliage. Bees droned in the heavy air and there was the scent of burning sandalwood.

  At the front of the monastery, standing in the doorless entryway, was a monk wrapped in saffron robes with a shaved head. Small and wizened, he peered at them with a lively face and a pair of sparkling black eyes tucked among a thousand wrinkles. Two tiny hands clutched the edges of his robe.

  Khon bowed and the monk bowed. They spoke, but once again Ford couldn’t follow the dialect. The monk gestured Ford over. “You are welcome here,” he said in Khmer. “Come.”

  They entered the roofless temple. The floor was of close-cut grass, as smooth and tended as a golf green. At one end stood a gilded statue of the Buddha, in the lotus position with half-closed eyes, almost buried under offerings of fresh flowers. Joss sticks burned in clusters around the statue, perfuming the air with sandalwood and merintane. A dozen robed monks stood behind the Buddha, almost defensively in a tight cluster, some hardly in their teens. The temple walls were made of stone recycled from the older ruin, and Ford could see pieces of sculpture peeking out of the broken, mortared blocks—a hand, a torso, half a face, the wildly gyrating limb of a dancing apsara. Along one wall ran two ragged lines of bullet pits made from a spray of automatic weapons fire. It looked to Ford like the site of an old execution.

  “Please, sit down,” the monk said, gesturing at some reed mats spread on the grass. The afternoon sun slanted in the broken roof, painting the eastern wall gold, incense smoke drifting in and out of the bars of light. After some minutes of silence a monk came in with an old cast-iron pot of tea and some chipped cups, placed them on the mat, and poured. They drank the strong green tea. When they had finished, the abbot rose.

  “Do you speak Khmer?” he asked Ford in a birdlike voice.

  Ford nodded.

  “What brings you to the end of the world?”

  Ford dipped into his pocket and took out the fake honey stone. With a gasp, the abbot rose quickly and stepped back in one fluid motion, and the other monks shuffled away. “Get that devil stone out of here.”

  “It’s a fake,” said Ford smoothly.

  “You’re gem traders?”

  “No,” said Ford. “We’re looking for the mine producing the honey stones.”

  For the first time, a flicker of emotion passed across the monk’s face. He seemed to hesitate, running a hand over his dry, shaven scalp. His fingers made a slight bristling noise as they ran over the stubble. “Why?”

  “I come from the U.S. government. We want to know where it is and shut it down.”

  “There are many ex–Khmer Rouge soldiers there, armed with guns, mortars, and RPGs. Violent people. How do you expect to go there and survive?”

  “Will you help us?”

  The monk spoke without hesitation. “Yes.”

  “What do you know about the mine?”

  “There was a big explosion in the forest about a month ago. And then, a little while later, they came. They raided mountain villages to get people to mine the devil stones. They work them to death and then go out and capture more.”

  “Can you tell us anything about the layout of the mine, the number of soldiers, who’
s running the place?”

  The abbot made a gesture and a monk on the other side of the room rose and went out. A moment later he came back leading a blind child of about ten in monk’s garb. His face and scalp were a web of shiny scars, his nose and one ear gone, his two eye sockets knots of fiery scar tissue. The body under his robes was small, thin, and crooked.

  “This one escaped to us from the mine,” said the abbot.

  Ford looked at the child more closely, and realized she was a girl, dressed as a boy.

  The monk said, “If they knew we were hiding her, we would all die.” He turned to her. “Come here, my child, and tell the American everything you know, even the worst parts.”

  The child spoke in a flat, emotionless voice, as if reciting in a schoolroom. She told of an explosion in the mountains, the coming of ex–Khmer Rouge soldiers; how they attacked her village, murdered her mother and father, and force-marched the survivors through the jungle to the mine. She described how she slowly went blind sorting through piles of broken rock for the gems. Then, in clear, precise language, she described in detail the layout of the mine, where the soldiers patrolled, where the boss man lived, and how the mine operated. When she was done, she bowed and stepped back.

  Ford laid down his notebook and took a long breath. “Tell me about the explosion. What kind of explosion?”

  “Like a bomb,” she said. “The cloud went way up into the sky and a dirty rain fell for days afterward. It knocked down many trees.”

  Ford turned to the monk. “Did you see the explosion? What was it?”

  The abbot looked at him with penetrating eyes. “A demon from the deepest regions of hell.”

  19

  Abbey jammed the pin into the anchor stay and came aft, hopping down into the wheel house. “We’re outta here,” she said, grabbing the wheel and revving the engine, swinging the prow away from Marsh Island, which they had just searched.

  “That was a bust,” Jackie said crossly.