by James Samuel
“Just wait until the lady comes back and then off you pop.” Mike touched him on the shoulder. “They already know which one I want.”
The Khmer exhaled in a way that made him sound like he’d both sighed and choked on his spittle at the same time.
The lady returned after a couple of minutes of awkward waiting. James’ pulse quickened. He couldn’t back out now. The time had come. His fingers twitched with anger at the people who worked here day in and day out without a second thought for those they exploited.
She gave him a flirty smile and gestured for him to follow with a finger. Wearing a pair of six-inch heels, she tottered down a corridor of what looked like identical rooms. James couldn’t take his eyes off the double doors at the far end of the corridor. He knew instantly that Mr. Chea would be behind those doors.
She took him to the middle of the corridor and directed him to a door on the right. The girl flashed him another plastic smile, before admitting him. The door clicked shut behind him. His eyes adjusted to the scene. James found himself standing in a room straight out of a bad 1970s porno flick.
There was a mirror over what looked like a waterbed covered in zebra print sheets. The walls were a bright pink, lit by the same garish aura. A lava lamp glowed next to the bed, its insides of mineral oil and paraffin wax bumped up against each other like bacteria under a microscope. A small Khmer boy stood before him.
James gulped, the distinct feeling of nausea corroding his stomach. The Khmer boy looked nervous. He couldn’t have been more than eight or nine. One of his front teeth was missing and his chocolate brown eyes darted from side to side. This boy hadn’t been here long. He still didn’t understand what it was all about.
“Hello,” said James.
The boy only stared back at him.
James felt silly trying to speak to him in English. The boy had found himself thrust into the dark underbelly of the world, alone and confused. James dreaded to think what The Palace’s other clients had done to him.
He fished his smartphone from his pocket, the only place he felt safe enough to do so. Pressing the speed dial button, the phone rang, and Sinclair answered. He heard the din of the party going on across the road through the speakers.
“I’m upstairs and in the room. Two doors down from where Mr. Chea should be,” said James.
“Good. Your friend is still outside waiting. He keeps looking back at me and smiling. I get the distinct impression he thinks I don’t trust him.”
“No, really?”
“What’s the security situation?”
“Almost non-existent. None of them look like they’re carrying guns. There’s no security outside Mr. Chea’s office. I should be able to make it in as long as nobody is watching the cameras.”
“Okay, don’t do anything stupid. Remember, it’s still illegal to touch little boys.”
James clicked off the phone, not finding the joke funny in the slightest.
He motioned to the boy to sit on the bed. As The Palace had taught him to do, he sat on the waterbed. The well-used bed looked fit to collapse at any moment under the boy’s weight. The Khmer boy seemed terrified. James had no affinity for children. He couldn’t stand to look at the child prostitute any longer.
Turning away, he ran through the plan in his head. His heart rate spiked once again. He let out a great puff of air as he eased the door open as slowly as he could. Peeking out into the corridor, he saw only the back of the obese Khmer. Mike had already disappeared into another room.
“Stay here.” James gestured with his finger at the bed, hoping the child understood.
James ventured into the hallway and shut the door behind him. He eased his way down the corridor at a quick pace. A security camera above Mr. Chea’s door pointed directly at him. James put everything out of his mind but the mission. Deftly, without making a sound, he tried the door. It opened with a soft clack.
He tightened his fists as a couple of Khmer glanced up at him dumbstruck. They wore the same uniforms as the security downstairs.
James smiled. “Do you speak English?”
One of them got off the folding chair positioned against the door. “Tourist? This is the wrong room.”
As the security guard approached him, James thrust his tactical pen into his throat. The metal tip hit its mark and blood exploded from the arteries in his throat. The guard gripped his neck to try to stem the bleeding as he fell, but it was already too late.
The other security guard screamed in Khmer. James leapt at him before he could make it more than a few steps into the inner office. He stabbed him repeatedly in the back, puncturing the skin above his spinal column.
The guard yelled out in pain before James tightened his grip around his neck. James cut off the airflow and dropped him to the carpet.
He stopped as the sounds of the skirmish settled. James heard no footsteps. Nobody called out in Khmer to stop the intruder. Things had gone suspiciously quiet. James wiped the dead guard’s blood on his trousers and advanced into the inner office.
This was the first room he’d found with windows. Three small windows gave Mr. Chea a view onto the main road in front of The Palace. The same vulgar decoration had followed him to the inner sanctum of Mr. Chea’s office. The only difference: it seemed like someone came to clean a little more often.
Mr. Chea cowered below his desk. James caught the whiff of urine after covering half the distance towards him. Checking his corners carefully, he still couldn’t understand why nobody had come. Why didn’t such an important businessman have more than two grunts guarding his office?
“Mr. Chea.”
“Who are you?”
“Get out from under the desk. Don’t be a coward.”
Mr. Chea hesitated, but he eventually crept out from his pathetic hiding place. A dark stain covered his trousers. His first look at the master of prostitution in Phnom Penh disappointed him.
He’d seen people who dealt in prostitution before. They were tough men, uncaring, and often sadistic. The businessman standing before him could have been little more than a brow-beaten lawyer. Such an unremarkable figure wouldn’t stand out in a crowd.
“Sit down,” said James. “Where’s your security? Are there any more than those two back there?”
Mr. Chea shook his head.
He wanted to believe the man, but his instincts told him not to. Did he really believe himself so untouchable?
“Who watches your cameras for you?” asked James.
Mr. Chea gestured to a bank of security screens hidden in the corner. Sure enough, he could see every part of The Palace from here, except the rooms where clients carried out their worst impulses. James clicked his tongue. At the speed James had moved from his room to the office, if he hadn’t been watching the cameras, he would have never seen him. The fat Khmer continued to gaze at his laptop.
James shook his head in bewilderment.
“Are you going to kill me?” asked Mr. Chea.
“Maybe. I haven’t decided yet.”
James realised he had an opportunity before him. With Mr. Chea totally compliant, they could extract some information from him. He called Sinclair, never taking his eyes off Mr. Chea.
“I’m with Mr. Chea,” said James. “The security is terrible here. Is there anything you want me to ask him that might help us later on? I think we have an opportunity here.”
“Wow, that is a surprise. Usually, you shoot first and ask questions later. Ask him for any information on General Narith and his association with the prostitution business. You never know, he might know something, especially if he believes it will save his life.”
“Will it?”
“No, Thom wants him to be liquidated.”
James nodded. He wanted to remain coy to give Mr. Chea hope that he had a way out. A man who knew he would die had no reason to cooperate.
“Okay, Mr. Chea.” James lowered his phone. “We know about your business and we want to know more. Cooperate and you can go.”
> Mr. Chea straightened up in his chair, like a child who had been promised a piece of candy.
“We know you pay General Narith a portion of your business every month. In exchange, he gives you complete control over organised prostitution in Phnom Penh. With the army behind you, you know another Khmer can’t move in and take your business.”
Mr. Chea nodded in ascent.
“Good. Then we’re getting somewhere.” James paused to take a quick look at the security cameras. “How likely are we to be disturbed?”
“No chance. My employees call before they come. Only Chantou comes inside when she likes.”
“Chantou?”
“The girl who takes the clients to the rooms. You must have seen her, wearing a red dress.”
James nodded. That was a worrying development. She would see the bodies instantly and cry out for help. He kept a watchful eye on the cameras for any signs of her entering the inner sanctum.
“How well do you know General Narith?”
Mr. Chea shrugged. “Not very much. I last met him in-person three years ago.”
“Do you know about his planned coup against Hun Sen?”
Mr. Chea’s eyes boggled at the suggestion. “No.”
James sat on the edge of Mr. Chea’s desk. He sensed he was telling the truth. This was the type of man who offered loyalty to nobody.
“How would I get to General Narith?”
“I don’t know. I don’t know. I told you I never meet with him. We’re not close. It’s a business arrangement. I don’t know anything about the military.”
James wandered around the back of Mr. Chea’s office chair. As he placed his hands on the back of the chair, a garrotte fashioned out of a piece of piano and two small wooden handles appeared. He’d kept the garrotte hidden inside his pockets, along with the tactical pen. He wanted to kill Mr. Chea brutally, a modicum of the pain he’d inflicted on others.
“Mr. Chea,” said James. “I’m going to kill General Narith. Do you have anything useful I might be able to use?”
“The Chinese,” Mr. Chea squeaked out. “The Chinese. He works closely with the Chinese. He will have their support. Everyone knows that. But I don’t know who will be acting for the Chinese government. Look for the Chinese. Please… that’s all I know.”
James stretched out the garrotte behind Mr. Chea’s neck without his knowledge. There were no mirrors in the room, no way for the prostitution kingpin to know how close he was to death.
“You deal in children, I’ve noticed.”
“I’m a businessman. You barang come to Cambodia because that’s what you want. I take orphans, mainly, to give them a life. Out on the streets, they would die.” Ice throbbed through his tones. “People like me are the reason why they don’t starve. They live a good life here, and they have opportunities when they grow up. They earn more than the average Khmer.”
James clenched his teeth together. “You tell yourself that to sleep at night?”
“No, it’s how Cambodia works. It’s how Cambodia has always worked. I told you everything I knew. You said you would let me go if I cooperated.”
James gripped the sides of his garrotte. “If that’s how Cambodia works, let me show you how my world works.”
Mr. Chea tried to bolt, but James thrust the garrotte in front of his neck and tightened it. The piano wire cut into the soft flesh. Mr. Chea’s mouth opened, but only a gurgling sound made it out. Whether by blood loss, not being able to breathe, or no air being allowed to go to the brain, James didn’t care. He wanted Mr. Chea to feel his life slipping away, the type of death a bullet could never deliver.
James cranked back as hard as he could on the garrotte. A few more seconds and Mr. Chea’s body loosened. The deadweight of the man sank back against his chair. The horrified look of panic on his face, the glowing whites of his eyes, would follow him to the grave.
This was a kill he could take pride in.
Chapter Eleven
The street outside The Palace carried on like nothing ever happened. James strode out of The Palace, after washing his hands and arms of any traces of blood in the bathroom. The girl hadn’t appeared. The fat Khmer hadn’t heard a thing. He heard only the gut-wrenching cries from Mike’s room. Should he have intervened and risked discovery?
James stood outside the building and lit a cigarette to clear his mind. His encounters with men like Mr. Chea, men like Mike, made him question what business he was in. How much more of the horrors of the world could he witness without cracking? He took a long drag and tried to shut it out, at least for a while.
Sinclair tried to wave at him, but he pretended not to see. He didn’t want to speak to anyone about it.
He abandoned his beer and sauntered across the street towards him. “James, what is that?”
“What is what?”
James followed Sinclair’s gaze downwards to find the Khmer boy from his room. He jumped back in surprise. He’d never noticed that the boy had slipped away from his captors and followed him.
“It’s the boy they put in my room.”
Sinclair gave him a dumb gaze.
“You know,” he said, irritated at having to explain. “For sex. I don’t know how he managed to sneak out.”
“Well, send him back. This is where he lives.”
“Send him back?”
“Yes. What are you going to do with him? Take him with us.”
James took another look at the young Khmer. He couldn’t even tell him in a language he would understand to go away. Not that he wanted to. The boy was innocent of the dark acts expected of him. The boy couldn’t even comprehend what it was all about.
“Let’s go, James. As much as I’m impressed by how quietly you carried out this assignment, sooner or later someone is going to find the bodies.” Sinclair gestured at him to join Nhek and his motorbike. “Well?”
James let his cigarette droop from his lips as he chewed over what to do about the boy. After what he’d seen upstairs and their treatment at the hands of foreigners like him, how could he abandon him to this life? It rankled with him, but Sinclair was right. He couldn’t take a foreign child with him. Passengers were liabilities.
“Put him on the bike,” said James at last.
“Put him on the bike?” Sinclair repeated. “What do you mean put him on the bike?”
James tried to communicate with the child in the only way he could. Using the international language of pointing, the child followed.
“Mr. James, you make a new friend?” Nhek gave him a little wink.
“Not like that. Can you speak to him? Ask him where he comes from.”
Nhek spoke to the child in his own language. The apparent nervousness of the child didn’t stop him from chattering away to Nhek with little pause for breath.
“He says he thinks you came to rescue him. His name is Kosal and he says he always dreamed that someone would save him and take him away from there. He says that place is a very bad place.”
Sinclair threw up his arms. “We have nowhere to take the boy.”
“I take him.” Nhek waggled his head. “I take him, and he stays with me.”
James opened his wallet and thrust a hundred dollars into Nhek’s hands. This time, the driver didn’t reject James’ offer of money. An American hundred-dollar bill would provide everything a child needed for a long time.
“Okay, fine, that’s sorted,” said Sinclair. “Can we leave now? Before someone discovers the bodies?”
James clapped Sinclair on the back. “Come on, let’s go. We didn’t need the bike to get away after all. We can walk back to the guesthouse. Maybe the exercise will cheer you up.”
Nhek picked up Kosal and balanced him on his lap. The child showed no concern for his precarious position. James gave them a little wave as they sped off. He didn’t know what would become of the child, but his heart swelled. He’d done the right thing.
Sinclair could only scowl and tut at the scene before him. The two agents fled before the hor
rified cry of Mr. Chea’s employees alerted the city to the fact their boss’s neck now had an emergency exit in the front.
Chapter Twelve
Poipet, Banteay Meanchey, Cambodia
Sir Richard Davenport ruled over Xiphos Security from his office in London. Although no mercenary himself, he had served in the Royal Navy for the first twenty years of adulthood. Through the connections he’d built up during his years of service, he’d created Xiphos, a private military organisation much in the same vein as Blackwind. It had brought both operations into direct competition multiple times over the years.
Dylan wiped a strand of sandy hair from his forehead. With trembling fingers, he dialled the number for Sir Richard. He’d never taken on a project this significant before and being forced to execute General Somnang still shook him up. There was something different about murder up close.
“Yes?” Sir Richard’s tart voice answered.
“Sir Richard, it’s Dylan. Sorry to call you on your private number.”
“I hope you are calling from a secure line. I told you to call me today as I have just confirmed some unfortunate news. Mr. Chea of Phnom Penh is dead.”
“Oh…”
“Are you not aware of Mr. Chea?”
“Mr. Fen never said anything. He doesn’t say much of anything actually. I get the impression he’s hiding a lot from me.”
“Of course, he is. The Chinese have never trusted Western organisations, even those as reputable as Xiphos. However, Mr. Chea was a key businessman in General Narith’s operations. He controlled and operated almost the entire prostitution trade in Phnom Penh. This will be a blow to General Narith, and therefore, Shao Fen himself.”
Dylan felt his fingers growing sweaty as he clutched his phone to the side of his sticky sideburns. “Thank you for informing me, Sir Richard.”
