The Deceivers (21 page)

She laughed. “They're addictive. You can't have just one.”

“They taste a little like salty burnt nuts.”

“It's good protein. Have another?”

“No, thanks. One's enough for me.” It wasn't high on my list of exotic treats. “What time are we supposed to meet with Kirk on the road?”

“He didn't give me an exact time. I guess it depends on how things go with his crew in removing the land mine. But we'll reach Siem Reap well before dark.”

The answer seemed a little vague to me. I decided not to mention that I'd seen Kirk yesterday with Bullock at the Russian Market. He may well have left for a land mine excursion after that. I wasn't sure what was involved in disarming a land mine since I really hadn't gone into any deep discussion about the subject with him.

My intuition was starting to kick in again, telling me that maybe I shouldn't totally trust Chantrea. She was conveniently at the Foreign Correspondents' Club where both Kirk and Bullock hung out. She had taken me to the museum but basically assigned Nol to deal with me—maybe even watch me—and now was chaperoning my Angkor trip.

Even though she had called Bullock disgusting, I wondered if it was an act on her part? Were the three of them a team? Maybe they were involved in some big-time antiquities scam? Maybe I was in the way and they planned to get rid of me in some deserted place?

Too many maybe's and questions swirled in my head. The tension was slowly creeping into my neck. I recognized the symptoms and quickly popped two aspirins in my mouth with the bottled water that I always carried with me. If I didn't take them now, I knew it would just get worse and turn into a migraine.

“Not feeling well?”

“Just a little headache,” I said. “It'll go away.”

We were on the outskirts of the city heading north in the direction of Siem Reap when she asked, “Do you mind if we make a quick stop? I have to drop a package off to someone.”

“No,” I said.

She drove us into a street with shabby tenements. The street was unpaved and had rubbish strewn all about. I'd seen a hundred like it in the city.

Pulling up to a building, she said, “I won't be long.”

She took a cardboard carton off the backseat and went to the ground-floor window of an apartment. The curtain was moved aside as she approached and a young girl slid open the window to take the box.

I winced when I saw the girl's face. I tried not to stare but I couldn't help it. She had terrible raw, red lesions and blotches. I quickly turned away, not bearing to look at her.

Chantrea came back after a short discussion at the window.

I waited until we were back on the road and Chantrea hadn't volunteered an explanation before opening my mouth. “That poor girl. What happened to her?”

Chantrea didn't speak for a moment. I realized she was holding back her emotions. Finally she said, “Acid.”

“Acid? Someone did it deliberately?”

“A jealous wife drenched her with acid. Walked into the bar where the girl worked and threw acid in her face.” She gave me a grim look. “It's not the first time it's happened to a pretty young girl who's become the lover of a married man. You can't blame the women. Most of the people alive today have lived through not only some of the most horrific violence, but almost continuous war, civil war, political turmoil, and atrocities. We're all shaped by the violent atmosphere we were nurtured in.”

I didn't know what to say.

She looked over at me. “There's nothing to say,” Chantrea said, reading my feelings. “What happened in the past doesn't excuse the brutality of the wife. But in a way, this girl was lucky. She didn't get blinded by the acid. Some do.”

“Throwing acid in someone's face is pure evil and vicious. What about the police? What happened to the wife?”

“The wives are usually married to prominent officials or businessmen. The police rarely dare to arrest them. And when the police do make an arrest, justice is a matter of how much money passes under the table.”

“Aren't there any laws?”

“Laws?” She laughed. “We've been a civilized culture for a couple thousand years and we still don't have a modern court system capable of truly expending justice. Key figures of the Khmer Rouge, people who were involved in the murder of a million people over thirty years ago, still haven't been brought to justice.”

I shook my head back and forth, more in disgust than disbelief. Thinking about the scarred girl made we wonder about Chantrea's background and family. I really didn't know that much about her.

“Do you have any family?”

“My family is mostly gone. That girl you saw is a distant relative. A cousin, second or third, maybe even more distant. A lot younger than me, not someone I even know well, but still family. I drop off money and special cream for her to relieve the pain. She will always bear the scars. She'll never have the money to go to Hong Kong or Tokyo where they can be repaired. I don't have it, either.”

“Your family, what happened to them, if you don't mind my asking?”

She took a deep breath. “I was five years old when the Khmer Rouge took over Cambodia. They killed my father because he was a teacher and they wanted to get rid of anyone educated. My mother was killed because she pleaded with the soldiers not to take her children away. Family units were no longer permitted. My two brothers and I were separated and sent to different camps when they evacuated the city. I never saw them again.”

There was no anger, no outrage in her voice, just a plain statement of fact about the atrocities committed to her family.

“It must have been horrible to lose your family like that.”

“For a five-year-old, it's scary and frightening to be separated from your family. To see your parents killed and not understand why … that falls beyond frightening and into the realm of the macabre.”

“What about other relatives?”

“Most of the older ones died from starvation or illness. A few of the younger ones managed to survive, barely. If you were sick, they left you by the roadside; if you couldn't walk any farther, the soldiers killed you.”

“I can't imagine—”

“No, you can't imagine what it's like to work twelve to fourteen hours a day, every day, to be fed one bowl of thin soup a day, to see your friends and family die from starvation or torture, to be in constant fear of being murdered over doing some little thing wrong, for not working hard enough, for looking at them cross-eyed, for showing sympathy to someone … they didn't need a reason to kill you.”

Bitterness was creeping into her voice. “They took everything away from us. Our homes, our families, our dignities, our very humanity. Some of us who weren't beaten to death or shot or starved just died inside.”

“Why didn't the people rebel?”

“What good would it have done? People were hungry, worn down, scared. They tortured and killed anyone who showed the slightest resistance, even the slightest disapproval of anything they said.”

“You must have hated the Khmer Rouge.”

“I was too young to understand what was happening. But I learned to hate them. I hated them for taking my family away from me. I hated them for the cruelty they inflicted. But I was lucky. I survived. The question I always have is: Why? Why did it happen to us?”

She took her eyes off the road and turned to me. “Do you know that Cambodia is the only country in the world that has a Day of Hate? A day to remember the atrocities and hate those who committed them?”

 

U.S. D
EPARTMENT OF
S
TATE

Bureau of Consular Affairs
Washington, D.C. 20520

 

Consular Information Sheet:
CAMBODIA

TRAVELING IN CAMBODIA

Safety of Public Transportation:
Poor

Urban Road Conditions/Maintenance:
Poor

Rural Road Conditions/Maintenance:
Poor

Availability of Roadside Assistance:
Nonexistent

Driving at night in Cambodia is strongly discouraged. Cambodian drivers routinely ignore traffic laws and vehicles are frequently poorly maintained. Intoxicated drivers are commonplace, particularly during the evening hours, and penalties for DWI offenses vary greatly. Even on heavily traveled roads, banditry occurs, so all travel should be done in daylight between the hours of 7:00
A.M.
and 5:00
P.M.

The U.S. Embassy advises Embassy personnel not to travel by train because of low safety standards and the high risk of banditry. Travel by boat should be avoided because boats are often overcrowded and lack adequate safety equipment.

Moto-taxis and cyclos (passenger-carrying bicycles) are widely available; however, the Embassy does not recommend using them due to safety concerns and because personal belongings can be easily stolen. Organized emergency services for victims of traffic accidents are nonexistent outside of major urban areas, and those that are available are inadequate.

22

As we drove I occasionally took a subtle look behind us. There was nothing to see, of course, except other cars on the road. I don't know what I expected to see—thugs in black cars following us?

The farther north we drove, the more I got to see the “real” Cambodia with tropical foliage, rice fields, and gentle, thin, smiling people with warm eyes. I also saw people with missing limbs from land mines and empty bomb casings used by the people as pig troughs, benches, and fence posts.

As we passed through villages, I noticed that most of the houses were clustered around a monastery or wat. That was typical of towns in Europe and Latin America, too.

“How many people live in the rural areas compared to living in the city?”

“About eighty percent. Their principal occupation is subsistence farming on family-operated holdings.”

It was obvious people possessed little in terms of material goods. “I imagine we Americans spend more money on medical treatment for our pets than these people do for themselves and their children.”

“And I'm sure your pets eat better, too.”

She was probably right. It was a depressing thought.

We drove in silence for a while before I brought up a question that I was dying to ask.

“You never did tell me what Bullock is really famous for.”

“You may regret asking that question. At the Stung Meanchey garbage dump hundreds of the poorest of the poor, including many small children, swarm over the refuse hoping to find something of value.”

I had a disgusting feeling why he went there. “He doesn't go there for the trash.”

She nodded. “Bullock goes to the dump to buy children. Renting them perhaps is a better definition.”

“That is sick. Really sick. Why don't the authorities do anything? You can't tell me that they turn their heads when it comes to molesting children.”

“They do if the evidence isn't rubbed in their faces. Cambodia is a corrupt country, as you know. Like most underdeveloped countries, corruption is a way of life for these government officials and they often can't survive without participating in it. It's not something people do because they're bad. Often it's expected. They do it to survive. You can't open up a shoe store without paying off government officials, from the licensing department to the inspectors. And you can't get a job in the government without paying someone.”

“Felony ugly,” I said, more to myself.

“Felony ugly?”

“Sorry. I was thinking out loud. It's a lawyer's expression in the States. When a criminal looks like he could commit the crime he's accused of, they call it felony ugly. Bullock could easily pass for a child molester to a jury.”

I was curious as to how she managed to get a good government position in a corrupt society, and once again she read my mind.

“I was lucky,” Chantrea said. “I got an education in France. That opened doors.”

The explanation came across as inadequate to me, but I kept my mouth shut. Whatever it took, no one on earth who didn't walk in her shoes could question her actions.

“Oh, fuck it,” Chantrea said.

I looked at her in surprise.

“Kirk is right about Cambodia. It's a hellhole. Few places in the world can rival Phnom Penh's traffic in illegal weapons, heroin, child prostitution, and money-laundering. I'm sure he told you about the local English-language newspapers carrying ads for companies that help foreigners negotiate with kidnappers.”

“He did.”

She gave me an angry glance. “Thailand and Vietnam are making ventures into information technology and manufacturing. Here, the hottest new business is a black-market trade in human organs for medical transplants.”

“It doesn't surprise me. That's hot in other countries, too.”

Thinking about all the daily corruption and injustices of life that Chantrea had to put up with made me appreciate that I lived in a civilized, rational country more or less. It reminded me again of my mother's comment: Don't complain about not having shoes when some people don't have feet. Chantrea and the people of Cambodia were cut off at the knees.

I wanted to know how well Kirk and Bullock knew each other, so I asked, “Kirk doesn't seem to like Bullock all that much.”

“I really don't know.”

She obviously didn't take the bait to gossip about them, so I decided to drop it.

The region that unfolded as we drove remained pretty much the same—plenty of rice fields, sugar palm trees, and jungle. Every so often we would pass a small village. On the road we saw people carrying loads on the backs of their bicycles and wagons and trucks; one motorcyclist even managed to drive with a dead pig tied behind him.

At one point she left the main road and drove me to the Tonle Sap Lake to see a floating village.