Cambodian Book of the Dead (14 page)

 

L'ÎLE DES AMBASSADEURS

 

Maier enjoyed the trip. No rain clouds and no dolphins. No tourists from Frankfurt. Samnang passed the eastern shore of the island in a wide arc. Coconut palms lined the picture-postcard beach.

The young Khmer captain stared across the water without expression. Maier did not find this reassuring, but the sunset hung like a Turner painting and lent the day plenty of painful
Endzeitstimmung
. He was sailing into the beginning of the end of something.

The redhead from England was also quiet and smoked one Ara after another.

As a journalist, Maier had always known why he worked in dangerous situations. He had a mission, a job, to go to hell, to visit places where no one would go voluntarily, to collect information and impressions and to carry them back into the world to remind the people back home how easy their lives were. It had also been a way to get to know the new reunited Germany, by working with other Germans who were always on the road. Maier had loved the friendships and the cut-throat competition of war reporting. He'd met the same remarkable people over and over – in Rwanda, in Bosnia, in Cambodia, in Afghanistan. Everyone spinning the wheel, until they'd used up their survival points. After some years a sad routine became apparent. One friend after another died. A few got out of the game because their partners couldn't take it any longer. Maier had stayed on. Until Battambang.

But nothing had really changed. Maier was back in Cambodia, back in the country of his dead friend, Hort. He was sitting on a boat transporting him into a tropical
Heart of Darkness
, surrounded by people who didn't know why he was here, but who wanted to kill him anyhow.

His client circle back home had shrunk and become more exclusive and he no longer needed to look as closely at political conditions as in his last life. He no longer needed to work as transparently as a journalist either, and this was one aspect of his new profession that Maier liked. As a journalist one was often tied to a truth, usually not one's own. All that mattered for a detective was to close one's case successfully. This didn't have to have anything to do with truth, not one's own and not that of others either.

But detectives and journalists followed common threads – snooping around, unearthing information and asking questions, the search for informants, and, in conflict countries, the ever-present danger of being killed for asking one question too many.

Maier would have to be very careful tonight. He could only hope that the former Khmer Rouge general had made the effort to check his financial background.

They had already turned to the south side of Koh Tonsay. Samnang slowed the engine and lifted the propeller out of the shallow water. A white, solitary bungalow stood two hundred metres ahead, a little set back from the beach amidst a coconut plantation. Tep liked things private.

“This is it. The Villa Ambassade.”

Three girls ran along a narrow wooden pier. A speedboat was moored to the rickety structure and bounced gently up and down in the waves. Pete had climbed to the front of the boat and dropped the small anchor into the water. The boy that Maier had already seen in action in the Heart appeared behind the three girls.

As he stood up, Maier could hardly believe his eyes. The girls were around twelve or thirteen and wore identical black pyjama suits, complimented by crude flip-flops cut from spent car tyres – the uniform of the Khmer Rouge. Their hair was cut short, they wore red
krama
around their necks and carried Kalashnikovs. What a show of force. Welcome to my genocide. Samnang stayed in the boat and Maier could feel that Pete had tensed up. But it was too late for second thoughts. They'd arrived at the place he'd wanted to visit all along. He ignored the pier and jumped into the shallow water. The Englishman followed and lit an Ara.

The youngest and meanest girl got off the pier, stepped right to the water's edge and pointed the gun at Pete's chest.

“No smoking,” she barked.

There was no arguing with the weapon or the girl, but Pete wasn't sure how to get rid of the cigarette. The girl looked like she would shoot him if he dropped it into the water.

“That's how you give up smoking,” he mumbled and gave his Ara to Samnang.

“In a minute she'll tell us that smoking is decadent.”

Maier didn't feel much like joking. He already had the feeling that he was a prisoner. He followed the boy to the villa. The girls marched slowly after them. Not a word of greeting.

“Be really careful what you say here. Tep is very eccentric. Especially when he's at home. Just keep focused on the business.”

“Is he trying to bring back the Seventies? Does he have many of these killer girls?”

“Many.”

Maier shook his head.

The Khmer Rouge had long stopped functioning as a guerrilla force. No one in Cambodia dressed and walked like these girls today. Once again, his thoughts drifted back to what he had seen through the hole in the floor of the casino.
Their host was waiting for them on the wooden veranda of his villa. The veranda faced the jungle. The man obviously didn't think much of sunsets. Today the old Khmer was in uniform. His short hair had been cropped shorter and stood in stubbles on his square head. Tep wore the uniform of a Khmer Rouge general.

The old soldier nodded without a word and waved Maier to a rattan chair. He didn't offer his hand. There were only two chairs on the veranda. The boy and the three girls in black lined up behind Tep. Pete had disappeared.

A large tattered flag graced the wall of the bungalow. Maier was pretty sure that the three yellow Angkor towers set against the red background had once served as the colours of Democratic Kampuchea, the short-lived Cambodia of the Red Khmer.

Kaley stepped out onto the veranda, with two glasses of wine balanced on a plastic tray. She too was dressed in black. She had put her hair up under a black Mao cap and didn't know him. She handed him one of the glasses without a word. The flag and the outfits, all this iconography of failure, reminded Maier of skinhead gatherings in Germany, but these people looked more serious and spooky.

Tep was watching him attentively. Maier watched back. He had the feeling that he wasn't being appraised by the old man alone. You could easily get paranoid in the presence of Khmer Rouge, but he felt he was being observed by someone else. The door which led into the villa was covered by a curtain. Maier thought he could make out someone breathing behind the cloth. It wasn't Pete, of that he was sure. No, this sounded like a much older man.

Maier's brain suddenly did somersaults. Perhaps Pol Pot, Brother Number One, was still alive. Perhaps he had not been poisoned by the Thais in 1998, but had retired to the idyll of Koh Tonsay. Crazy idea. Maier wasn't that important.

“Mr Maier, you are our guest for almost two weeks now and you not come to visit me in my home. And you meet everyone else in Kep. Maybe you like to find friend because you have no friend?”

Maier cleared his throat. “I have been trying to understand the investment.”

Tep smiled like a gentle, slightly senile pensioner.

“And how is investment climate in Kep?”

“It seems that all roads, and boats, lead to your doorstep.”

Maier was not sure how to address the man. Comrade didn't seem a good choice. And he wasn't going to call him General.

“Yes, they do,” the general confirmed. “All roads lead to Tep. But you visit the very small one-way streets in Kep. I hear that you go to Bokor Casino to look.”

The eyes of the old man did not go well with his friendly-grandpa style interrogation technique. They drilled right through Maier. He'd have to choose his next words very carefully. “True, I was in Bokor a few days ago. I only saw the casino from the outside. An amazing building.”

Tep nodded.

“It so run down. I will change it. Bokor is very special place in Cambodia. I will make resort there, maybe even golf course. What do you think, Mr Maier?”

“I don't understand why you are so keen on tourism, as well as the past?”

Maier realised immediately that he'd made a mistake.

“Which past, Mr Maier?”

There was no turning back. Maier had pushed ahead too far and too quickly.

“Your past, Tep. You are surrounded by children in black uniforms. That's a tradition from a time when foreigners were not welcome here.”

The Khmer laughed and shook his head.

“You wrong, Mr Maier. Cambodia always welcome the foreigner, even in Angkor time. Only foreigner who want to make problem, who want to know our business, who maybe want to stop Cambodia become great country again, like Vietnamese, or American, we don't like to see.”

Maier didn't say anything. He started wondering whether the three machine guns that were loosely pointing in his direction were slowly homing in. But he didn't look directly at the girls. He had his hands full with Tep.

“You see, Mr Maier, all foreigner who come to Kep and stay more than holiday, I meet. And you understand, in Cambodia today, the government very weak. So, in the province, the local man has to do the best to rebuild the country. We need to rebuild the country, Mr Maier. We have little money. America bomb everything and when we beat the foreign enemy, the Vietnamese, our real enemy, invade. Stay ten years, no problem. Big problem for Khmer. Vietnam make problem for Cambodia long time, take our land, destroy our country. We cannot do business with Vietnamese or American. So I ask, I meet clever man like you and I think, you work for this side or that side? Maybe you here to make problem for Cambodia, take our land or take our woman and child?”

Maier shrugged and answered, “You know all about the activities of the
barang
in Kep and hence you should know that I am here to help Cambodia. Cambodia needs contact with the rest of the world. You cannot do it alone. The world is too small a place for that today.”

The old Khmer suddenly leaned forward and grabbed for Maier's right wrist.

“The whole world want to help Cambodia. The UN, the CIA, the newspapers and many people think they can fuck the women and kidnap the children, put people in factories, where they make clothes for
barang
for a few riel. All this just to make economy in your country strong. And then you come and tell us we are murderers. Are you this people, Mr Maier?”

Maier sat motionless and took his time to answer. Tep continued to hold on to his wrist. The breath of the old man was stale and used up.

“I came to you tonight to discuss business. If you want to accuse me of other things, get your information right. A man with your connections should be able to find out whether I am just talking or whether I really have the money to buy a villa or two and restore them.”

The general laughed sourly. “That right, Mr Maier. I am honest with you. I cannot find out why you come here. I spend my life in Kep. I come from Kampot Province, where I grow up in a village. But I cannot decide if you want to make problem for my country and steal from Cambodian people, or if you are useful to rebuild Cambodia.”

Tep rose and grabbed Maier's left hand as well. The detective wondered whether he'd be asked to dance next.

“Mr Maier, I tell you a story about Cambodian village. You know, local people in Cambodia are very superstitious. One day a group of monk come to my village. The monk is telling the villagers that they can kill all bad spirits in the village, if the villagers give them money and the animals. The villagers happy for help fighting many bad spirits, give the monk their animals and the money, and the monk leave the village. In the evening, a young boy is walking home from his rice field, when meet the group of monk. The monk drinking and eating. They kill all the animals already. They very drunk. The boy run home and tell his mother about the monk. The mother not believe her son and take him to the monk. The monk tell the mother, her son have the bad spirit inside and not his fault what he say. The monk tell the mother to leave the boy. They promising to help the boy. The mother agree and the monk take the boy and torture him for a week. After, the monk leave the boy almost dead near the village and disappear. Is the boy clever or stupid?”

Maier was certain now that a third person was a silent participant in their conversation. In the silence between the general's words, he felt a shadow leaning over him.

“I am poor farmer son when French are here. My uncle die, building the road to Bokor. Like many other Cambodian, he die for the French. Later my brother work as guard in big villa. One day, the son of owner drive his car into a tree and tell his father my brother the driver. The father was friend of King Sihanouk. They arrest my brother and take him to the jail in Kampot. We never see him again. You see, no matter who rule Cambodia, the people without power never can do anything.”

“Tep, we face the same situation in Germany. We have a lot in common. I grew up under a socialist government as well.”

“You are from East Germany? Why you tell people in Kep you are from Hamburg?”

The old Khmer knew too much. Maier felt dizzy again. No ordinary Khmer Rouge, general or not, would know where Hamburg was. He made a last effort to worm himself out of being a suspect, which meant convicted and executed.

“I live in Hamburg. Until 1989, I worked in East Berlin, as well as in Hungary, Poland, Czechoslovakia and Romania.”

The Khmer loosened his iron grip somewhat.

“Did you work for the Staatssicherheitsdienst? Do you know HVA?”

Maier had not expected this question. The HVA, the
Hauptverwaltung Aufklärung
, had been East Germany's secret service, its CIA. Maier had bumped into its agents in Eastern Europe, had even tried to seduce one of them in Breslau once. He shook his head. He hardly felt the needle penetrate his skin. The old Khmer smiled. Maier began to sink.