Peter May The Noble Path
For Jancie
‘I did not die, and did not remain alive; now
think for thyself, if thou hast any grain of
ingenuity, what I became, deprived of both
life and death.’
Part One
Prologue
Cambodia: April 1975
There is a seventeenth-century proverb which says, ‘When war begins hell opens.’ In this once lovely country in the heart of Indochina, hell opened when the war ended.
This, then, was liberation. Sullen youths in black pyjamas and red-chequered scarves cradling AK-47s with all the warmth they could not feel for their fellow human beings. It wasn’t hate in their eyes. It was hell.
A breeze brushed the faces. The thousands of faces all along Monivong Boulevard. It carried the smell of smoke, a city burning in places.
It carried the smell of fear. They said the Americans were coming to bomb the city; it would be safer in the countryside. No one believed it.
It carried the smell of death. They had emptied the hospitals. Broken bodies wheeled out on hospital beds, the tubes and wires of a discarded technology trailing behind, plasma and blood in their wake. Those who could walk leaned on crutches. Those who could not, died. The debris of this once elegant colonial city littered the street; a child screaming, an old man coughing blood on the pavement, the weary shuffling of a million pairs of feet on a dusty road to oblivion.
There is another proverb: ‘Hell is a city.’ On 17 April 1975, that city was Phnom Penh.
Chapter One
Ang Serey was a handsome woman, though you would scarcely have guessed it. Her face was blackened by smoke, and you could not tell if it was sweat or tears that made tracks through the filth. Her eyes were red-rimmed and bloodshot, and afraid to stray to one side or the other lest they betray an emotion. Her feet shuffled in open sandals among all the others. Ahead of her she pushed a cart bearing a few meagre belongings. On either side were the children she dared not look at. ‘Hold on to me so that I can feel you are there,’ she had whispered to them. ‘If anyone speaks to you, say nothing. Let me speak.’
For days she had worked her hands until they blistered and bled. Digging in the soft earth among the suburban bougainvillea, rubbing the dirt into the sores and blisters till her hands were red raw. She had made her children do it, too. The boy had cried at first, waving his stinging hands in the air. Why did his own mother make him do this? She had struck him when he refused to go on. And when his tears dried they were replaced by a sullen stare of hatred. The girl was older, yet it seemed she understood even less.
Ang Serey was an intelligent woman. She knew she must use that intelligence to hide itself; the black, peasant pyjamas, the hands of one who worked the land. Somehow she had to make the children understand. For if she couldn’t, their betrayal of the truth meant certain death.
There had been so little time. Just five days since Yuon had flown out on one of the last helicopters with the American evacuation. Ten days since he had told her, tears streaming down his cheeks, that he had been unable to get a place for her and the children. He had cried most of that night. Her eyes had been dry. She wondered if he expected her sympathy. It would break his heart to leave them, he had said. But still he left. Perhaps they could mend broken hearts in the West.
She lifted her head slightly towards the clear blue sky and felt the heat of the sun on her skin. They had passed by the smoking cathedral and the railway station, all those shuffling feet.
Chapter Two
South Armagh, Northern Ireland, October 1978
McAlliskey sat on a bench in a darkened corner of the pub, nursing the last of the Guinness in his pint glass, pulling distractedly on a hand-rolled cigarette held loosely between nicotine-stained fingers. The pub was quiet. A small, old-fashioned country pub, its wooden bar worn smooth by years of use. A group of farmers stood in a knot sinking pints and shorts, talking in low voices that rose occasionally in muted laughter. Big men, grimy caps pulled down over leathery faces.
‘Jaisus! If the beasts’s going to die anyway, youse are as well pumping the stuff into it yourself and saving the vet’s bill!’
An old woman behind the bar polished glasses, listening idly to the conversation. From time to time she glanced across at the stranger in the corner. She didn’t know him. She didn’t want to know him. This was bandit country and it was dangerous to know too much, dangerous to ask questions. Curiosity killed.
McAlliskey had crossed the border from the Republic three days earlier and spent two nights in different safe-houses. He stirred uneasily and flicked a look at the clock behind the bar. O’Neil was late, and he was aware of the woman’s attempts to avoid taking an interest in him. Which meant she would remember him. Where in God’s name had O’Neil got to? If something had gone wrong McAlliskey would be vulnerable here. He had the taste of fear in his mouth — a taste he knew well, had lived with these ten years past. But he could sink a dozen pints and not achieve the high he got from the adrenalin that was pumping through his veins right now.
A tiny stab of fear pricked his heart as the door opened and a man stepped into the pub, bringing the damp night air with him. O’Neil. Dark eyes set deep in a pale thin face. There was mud on his boots, rain on his collar, death in his eyes. He paused only momentarily, his gaze flickering past McAlliskey to the men at the bar. They seemed not to notice him.
He nodded to the woman. ‘Twenty Players plain.’
She reached for a packet from the shelf behind her and put it on the bar. ‘A wee whiskey, sir, to warm you on a cold night?’
He shook his head and dropped a note and some coins on the counter and glanced again at the little group of farmers. Still they showed no interest. He slipped the cigarettes in his pocket, nodded to the old woman and went out.
McAlliskey sat on for several minutes before draining his glass and taking a final draw on the remains of his cigarette. He rose from the bench, turning up his collar, and left, aware of the old woman watching him go. Outside, the cold caressed him like the icy fingers of a deceitful lover. A fine drizzle drifted down the main street, making haloes around the feeble yellow of the street lamps. The car was parked fifty yards away. He walked briskly to it, hands in pockets, and slipped into the back seat.
‘What the hell kept you!’
O’Neil looked at him in the driving mirror. ‘Another dud bloody detonator. Where in Christ’s name do you get the stuff?’
‘Come the day you need to know, I’ll tell you.’ McAlliskey took a battered tobacco tin from his pocket and started to roll another cigarette. ‘It’s set?’ O’Neil nodded. ‘Let’s go, then.’
They parked the car at a road end where a dirt track led up through a gate towards the woods above. Below them, the road ran steeply downwards between high hedgerows. To their left, a narrow lane led away around the side of the hill, hugging its contours before dropping down again to feed into the network of roads that fanned out through rolling farmland, south towards the Republic. O’Neil switched off the engine and killed the lights. He took a map from the glove compartment and shone a flashlight for McAlliskey to see. There were three routes traced in red, each an alternative escape to the south. They had been lettered A, B and C with a red marker. ‘To keep our options open,’ he said. ‘If anything goes wrong.’
McAlliskey nodded. He didn’t much like O’Neil, but he was thorough. And good with explosives.
They left the car and O’Neil led the way down the hill about two hundred metres. Then he stopped and whistled softly. A faint whistle answered his, somewhere away to their left, and the two men followed the sound, finding a deep-rutted tractor track that led them down to a drystone dyke at the corner of the field. A figure was crouched there, with a holdall tucked in under the wall to keep it dry. He flashed a light briefly in their faces.
‘Turn that fucking thing off!’ McAlliskey spoke softly, but his voice carried the authority of rank. The third man doused his light without a word.
‘Flaherty,’ O’Neil said.
McAlliskey crouched down beside him and saw that he was no more than a boy of sixteen or seventeen with fear in his eyes. ‘You should know better, son.’
‘I’m sorry, Mr McAlliskey.’ And there was awe in the boy’s voice. McAlliskey was almost a legend in the organization. The boy wasn’t sure what scared him more — McAlliskey or the bloody business they were about on this dark Irish night.
‘How long?’ McAlliskey asked.
‘’Bout fifteen minutes, sir.’
O’Neil opened the holdall and took out a small, hand-held radio transmitter. He extended the aerial and flicked a switch. A red light came on. He glanced at McAlliskey. ‘You sure they’ll be?’
‘They’ll be.’
And they settled back against the wall in silence, listening for the first distinctive sound of the army APC rolling up the lane towards them. From here, they had a perfect line of sight, and would see its lights early — the same lights that would illuminate the white marker O’Neil had planted at the roadside, in line with the twenty pounds of plastic explosive skilfully secreted just below the tarmac. O’Neil wondered how McAlliskey got his information. But he knew better than to ask.
McAlliskey took out his tobacco tin, leaning forward to keep it safe from the rain, and rolled another cigarette. He struck a match to light it, hands cupped around the box.
A hundred and fifty metres above them, a man lay still against a slight rise in the ground, below the shelter of the treeline. He had a livid white scar running back across one cheek where a bullet had grazed the flesh and taken off the lobe of his left ear. His dark hair was cropped short, greying at the temples. His eyes were blue and cold as steel. He saw the brief flare of the match light up the smoker’s face.
He had already picked out McAlliskey as he and O’Neil made their way across the field. Amateurs, he thought. He tucked the butt of his US M21 rifle into his shoulder. The weapon had been modified to his own specifications. He put his eye to the lens of the long, telescopic, infrared sight mounted above the butt end of the barrel, centring it on McAlliskey’s head, and he too prepared to wait.
They saw the lights of the APC before they heard the distant whine of its engine. Headlights raked the sodden green of the fallow winter fields, swinging one way then the other as the vehicle wound up the road towards them.
McAlliskey and the others crept further along the wall to a clearer vantage where a white gate opened into the lane. The man in the woods kept them in his sights and adjusted his position.
The engine of the armoured personnel carrier had become a roar now as it approached the marker on the road below. The muscles tightened across O’Neil’s chest and his finger hovered over the button on his handset. McAlliskey watched, impassive. Twenty metres, fifteen, ten. The APC lumbered inexorably towards the marker. A fine, cold sweat beaded across O’Neil’s forehead, his hands clammy. The boy glanced at him anxiously, his heart in his throat, almost choking him. The marksman in the woods focused on McAlliskey’s right temple. Gently he squeezed the trigger. The rifle sounded, like the crack of a dry branch underfoot. McAlliskey slumped forward, a neat round hole in his temple, blood gouting from the back where the bullet had passed through, taking half his head with it. O’Neil pressed the button involuntarily, and the explosion below ripped up the road, the APC still five metres short. But O’Neil barely heard it as he stared in horror at McAlliskey. He had hardly a chance to turn before the second bullet struck him full in the face, and his head cracked back against the wall.
Flaherty froze in a moment of panic, two men dead beside him, the shouts of the soldiers below as they fanned out from the APC, a searchlight sweeping the hillside. He looked up instinctively towards the woods and saw, for a second, a face caught in the searchlight glare. Then he took off, running hard in the direction he knew O’Neil had left the car.
The young captain shone his flashlight on the faces of the two bodies. The first was unrecognizable, but he held the beam on the second. His sergeant arrived breathless at his side.
‘Jesus! McAlliskey!’
‘Somebody just saved our lives, Sergeant.’
The sergeant spat. ‘A lot of lives. And a lot of bloody trouble.’
Elliot walked briskly up the ramp towards the Shuttle desk and presented his ticket. He had already passed through the stringent security at this airport on the hill, above the besieged city of Belfast. No problems. He wore a neatly pressed grey suit, white shirt and dark tie. With his slim black attaché case, a raincoat over his arm, he looked like any businessman on a return flight to London. He was thirty-nine but appeared older, his face unusually tanned for the time of year. The girl who handed him his boarding card assumed he was recently returned from a winter sunshine holiday. But Africa had been no holiday. Her eyes were drawn to the scar on his cheek, which stood out white against his tan, and she noticed that his left ear lobe was missing. He returned her stare, and her eyes flickered away self-consciously. He took a seat in the departure lounge.
He would collect the second half of his fee in London. This had been a departure for him. A one-off. Although, he considered, it wasn’t really so different from what he had been doing for the last twenty years. Just better paid. And he needed the money. He hadn’t been told who his paymasters were, but had a shrewd idea. The English establishment embraced hypocrisy with a greater ease than it did democracy.
He had not been told to take out O’Neil. Only McAlliskey. But he had judged it dangerous not to take O’Neil at the same time. He had no idea why he had left the boy, nor would he ever know just how great a mistake that had been.
He had not seen the two men standing idly by a newsstand in the terminal building. One of them, little more than a boy, pale and drawn and still shaking from the horror of the night before, had nodded in his direction.
‘That’s him.’
The other had glanced at the boy appraisingly. ‘You sure, kid?’
‘Sure, I’m sure.’ The boy had watched Elliot with hate in his heart. It was a face he would never forget.
Chapter Three
I
London, December 1978
It was raining. Cold. The clutch of black umbrellas around the grave shone wet, dripping on the feet of the mourners. One of them — death was his business — held an umbrella over the vicar as he read from his prayer book. Dust to dust, ashes to ashes... meaningless words reeled off for countless dead. The vicar hurried through it. He was cold, and the umbrella was dripping on the back of his neck. He hadn’t known the woman. Another faceless soul dispatched for judgement. He wondered, wearily, what had happened to the faith he had known in his youth. Perhaps, like listening to the same piece of music over and over, faith, like the melody, palled. He glanced at the daughter and felt a stab of guilt as she stooped to throw a handful of wet soil over the coffin. The young man beside her offered his handkerchief. She waved it away.
She too felt guilty, and was glad of the black veil that hid her face. No one could see that there were no tears. Her eyes were so dry they burned. She looked around the sad little gathering: a woman who’d worked with her mother, a couple of neighbours, the vicar, the professional mourner — and David. And David was only there because of her. These were all the friends her mother had to show for thirty-seven years. A strange, shy, introverted woman, her mother had not made friends easily. Lisa reconsidered. No, her mother had not made friends at all. Perhaps if Lisa’s father had lived... But her mother had never even spoken of him. A young soldier killed in Aden in the Sixties. Lisa had only been fifteen months old. She had no memory of him at all. Not even second-hand. Her mother had locked away all the photographs. ‘No point in living in the past,’ she’d said. And Lisa had never thought to question it.
Thirty-seven! To Lisa’s eighteen years it seemed old. But she supposed it was quite young really. Too young to die. Cancer of the breast. Her mother had been aware of the lump for over a year and been too frightened to see a doctor. It was Lisa, finally, who had made her go. But too late. I didn’t love her, Lisa thought. I can’t even cry. She knew she was depressed only for herself, for her future — alone.
David took her arm to lead her away from the graveside. David. Yes, she had forgotten about him. He wanted to marry her, he said. But she was too young and he was too keen. And, anyway, there had to be more to life, hadn’t there? Yet still she felt safe with him, like now, as he put a comforting arm around her shoulder. She glanced back as the gravediggers moved in to shovel earth carelessly over the coffin, burying her mother, her past.
‘Come on, love.’ David urged her gently away. She turned back towards the future with a heart like lead, and saw a man standing under the trees at the far side of the churchyard. A tall man in a dark coat, hands pushed deep into his pockets. He had no umbrella, no hat, and his short-cropped hair glistened in the rain. Lisa paused and David followed her eyes. ‘Who’s that?’ he said.
Lisa drew back her veil to see more clearly. ‘I don’t know.’
‘Well, I don’t like the way he’s looking at you.’ And David hurried her away. But the vision of the man remained with her. Something about his eyes.
‘That was an ugly scar on his cheek,’ she said.
II
At first she just wandered around the house touching things. Her things. The chair by the window where she sat nights reading her cheap romances, as though she might discover in them what she had failed to find in life. In the bedroom a brush lay on the dresser, her hair still tangled among the bristles. Lisa teased some out and ran it between her fingers. Soft, shiny. In the wardrobe her coats and dresses hung in neat rows. Lisa ran a hand along them. She picked out a jacket, held it against her face. Smelled it. Her mother’s smell. It is hard to believe, she thought, that someone is dead, when you can run their hair between your fingers, breathe in the smell of them from their clothes.
This was still her mother’s house. Always would be. A neat little semi in a neat little south London suburb. A place for everything and everything in its place. She had been ordered, fastidious to the point of obsession, Lisa just one more possession with a place in the order of things. Cared for, but without love, without warmth. Lisa had always known it, but never rebelled. Been unhappy but safe. Now anger welled inside her and she grabbed an armful of clothes from the wardrobe, throwing them across the room. She swept her arm across the dresser, sending make-up, perfume, brushes, ornaments clattering on to the floor. She stood for a moment, breathing hard, exulting in the violence of her rebellion. A rebellion that had come too late, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing — a remembered scrap of schooldays Shakespeare came back to mock her. Self-pity fuelled her anger as she ripped the sheets from her mother’s bed, lifting a pillow and slamming it repeatedly against the wall until it burst and filled the air with feathers, like snowflakes on a still winter’s day. And something inside her broke, releasing all the tears that had refused to come earlier. She fell on the bed sobbing wretchedly. Her mother had no right to die! How could she have done this to her?
It was almost dark when she rolled over and realized that she had slept. The bed was still damp where she had spilled her tears. She looked around at the chaos and felt numb. Why had she been so insistent that David did not come back after the funeral? They had almost fallen out over it. But he had conceded, finally, hiding his hurt, and said he would call tomorrow. She wished he was there now. Someone to hold her, to keep her safe and warm. She shivered, realizing how cold she was, and went downstairs to turn on the fire and make herself a mug of coffee.
She tried to think dispassionately about David. He was twenty-four, good-looking with his green eyes and mane of fine red hair. A night-shift reporter on one of the London papers. She had met him a few months earlier when he had guest-lectured as an ex-student on the journalist course she was taking at college. He still lived with his parents. Steady, middle-class people. Very pleasant, very dull. Her mother had liked David, the first boyfriend she had allowed her. He was safe and sensible. ‘That boy’s got his head screwed on,’ she used to say. But Lisa kept seeing him thirty years on, a clone of his father. Safe, sensible, dull.
She cupped her hands round the mug. There had to be something else. Nice! It was the word her mother used to describe everyone and everything that offered no risk. What she meant was safe. Lisa reflected that there must be a lot of her mother in her. It was what drew her, too, like a moth to a light. Safety. Only, she knew it was an illusion.
She wandered through to the living room. On the mantelpiece stood a framed photograph of herself aged twelve. A child with a pleated pony tail and a neatly pressed school uniform. Where was that little girl now? Time. It all seemed to slip away, like a shadow at the end of the day. She felt more like eighty than eighteen. As though her life was already over.
She gazed for some time at the photograph before she remembered the trunk in the attic. Years ago, as a child, she had found and opened it. She could have been no more than five or six. But she remembered the photographs, dozens of them in albums and a shoebox, faded black and white prints. There had been all manner of papers and documents in it, and an old jewellery box. Her mother had found her there with the trunk open and screamed at her and slapped her face. Never was she to go near that trunk again. She was confined to her room for the rest of the day. Some weeks later, while her mother was in the garden, she had crept back to the attic to discover that the trunk had been made secure with a heavy padlock.
The trunk was still there, behind a pile of cardboard boxes, thick with dust, untouched for years — perhaps since the time her mother had first padlocked it. The bulb in the attic had blown, and Lisa had to manoeuvre carefully by torchlight. She tugged at the padlock ineffectually and wondered where her mother might have kept the key.
She turned the house upside down but could find nothing that resembled the key she was looking for. The phone started to ring, loud and insistent in the empty house. It stopped Lisa in her tracks, her heart thumping. It could only be David. She stood uncertainly for a moment, then decided to let it ring out. Finally, she took a hammer and chisel from the toolbox under the sink and carried them up to the attic. Balancing the torch on a nearby box, she directed the beam on to the padlock and set about trying to break the lock. She quickly realized that wasn’t going to work, and turned to the clasp on the trunk itself, gouging with the chisel at the wood behind it. It took ten minutes of hacking and splintering before finally it broke free. Then she paused, breathless, almost afraid now to open it. With trembling hands she took the torch and lifted the lid on the past she thought had been buried with her mother.
A couple of layers of dry brown paper covered the contents. She tore them away, revealing again those things she had seen as a child. The pile of old photo albums, the jewellery box, an old rusted deed box, a shoebox filled with loose photographs — her mother as a child on holiday with her parents somewhere. A beach, an old-fashioned guest house, faces Lisa had never seen. Faces of people long dead. A fox terrier being cuddled lovingly by a small girl with hair tied back in ribbons. She put the box down, and lifted out a bundle of old, faded newspapers, which she laid aside without a second glance.
Then she took out the first of the albums, her mouth dry as she opened it. A confusion of more strange faces looked back at her. People standing in awkward groups grinning at the camera. Men in ill-fitting morning suits hired for the day. Her mother in white, smiling, almost beautiful. Lisa hardly dared look at the face of the man standing proudly beside her. A young, shy face, smiling nervously. A tall man with short dark hair, leaning slightly to one side, awkwardly holding the hand of his bride. Lisa’s father.
She suffered a feeling of anticlimax. And, yet, what had she expected? He was in army dress uniform, a very ordinary-looking man. She noticed several more uniforms among the guests as she flicked through the pages. Bride and groom cutting the cake. Then a full-sized close-up of the happy couple, arms linked, each with a glass of champagne. She examined her father more closely. He looked no more than twenty or twenty-one. There was something, she thought now, familiar about the face. Something about the eyes. Piercing, looking straight into hers. Then, quite suddenly, she felt every hair on the back of her neck stand up, her scalp tightening, the shock of it bringing the sting of tears to her eyes. Staring back at her, in the yellow light of the torch, was the face of the man she’d seen standing under the trees in the churchyard. A tear splashed on to the page. Her whisper filled the dark. ‘He’s alive!’
Four hundred miles away in a small, darkened room on the top floor of a building off the Falls Road in Belfast, Elliot’s face was drawn from a large beige envelope. The face was older than in the wedding photographs, and had by now acquired its distinctive scar. The photograph was placed in the centre of a bare wooden table. There were three men seated around it. The man who had taken the print from the envelope turned it through ninety degrees in order that the others could see it clearly.
‘John Alexander Elliot.’ He spoke with a thick Belfast brogue. ‘Ex-British army. Now freelancing. He killed McAlliskey. And O’Neil.’ He paused. ‘We want him dead.’
I
London, December 1978
It was raining. Cold. The clutch of black umbrellas around the grave shone wet, dripping on the feet of the mourners. One of them — death was his business — held an umbrella over the vicar as he read from his prayer book. Dust to dust, ashes to ashes... meaningless words reeled off for countless dead. The vicar hurried through it. He was cold, and the umbrella was dripping on the back of his neck. He hadn’t known the woman. Another faceless soul dispatched for judgement. He wondered, wearily, what had happened to the faith he had known in his youth. Perhaps, like listening to the same piece of music over and over, faith, like the melody, palled. He glanced at the daughter and felt a stab of guilt as she stooped to throw a handful of wet soil over the coffin. The young man beside her offered his handkerchief. She waved it away.
She too felt guilty, and was glad of the black veil that hid her face. No one could see that there were no tears. Her eyes were so dry they burned. She looked around the sad little gathering: a woman who’d worked with her mother, a couple of neighbours, the vicar, the professional mourner — and David. And David was only there because of her. These were all the friends her mother had to show for thirty-seven years. A strange, shy, introverted woman, her mother had not made friends easily. Lisa reconsidered. No, her mother had not made friends at all. Perhaps if Lisa’s father had lived... But her mother had never even spoken of him. A young soldier killed in Aden in the Sixties. Lisa had only been fifteen months old. She had no memory of him at all. Not even second-hand. Her mother had locked away all the photographs. ‘No point in living in the past,’ she’d said. And Lisa had never thought to question it.
Thirty-seven! To Lisa’s eighteen years it seemed old. But she supposed it was quite young really. Too young to die. Cancer of the breast. Her mother had been aware of the lump for over a year and been too frightened to see a doctor. It was Lisa, finally, who had made her go. But too late. I didn’t love her, Lisa thought. I can’t even cry. She knew she was depressed only for herself, for her future — alone.
David took her arm to lead her away from the graveside. David. Yes, she had forgotten about him. He wanted to marry her, he said. But she was too young and he was too keen. And, anyway, there had to be more to life, hadn’t there? Yet still she felt safe with him, like now, as he put a comforting arm around her shoulder. She glanced back as the gravediggers moved in to shovel earth carelessly over the coffin, burying her mother, her past.
‘Come on, love.’ David urged her gently away. She turned back towards the future with a heart like lead, and saw a man standing under the trees at the far side of the churchyard. A tall man in a dark coat, hands pushed deep into his pockets. He had no umbrella, no hat, and his short-cropped hair glistened in the rain. Lisa paused and David followed her eyes. ‘Who’s that?’ he said.
Lisa drew back her veil to see more clearly. ‘I don’t know.’
‘Well, I don’t like the way he’s looking at you.’ And David hurried her away. But the vision of the man remained with her. Something about his eyes.
‘That was an ugly scar on his cheek,’ she said.
II
At first she just wandered around the house touching things. Her things. The chair by the window where she sat nights reading her cheap romances, as though she might discover in them what she had failed to find in life. In the bedroom a brush lay on the dresser, her hair still tangled among the bristles. Lisa teased some out and ran it between her fingers. Soft, shiny. In the wardrobe her coats and dresses hung in neat rows. Lisa ran a hand along them. She picked out a jacket, held it against her face. Smelled it. Her mother’s smell. It is hard to believe, she thought, that someone is dead, when you can run their hair between your fingers, breathe in the smell of them from their clothes.
This was still her mother’s house. Always would be. A neat little semi in a neat little south London suburb. A place for everything and everything in its place. She had been ordered, fastidious to the point of obsession, Lisa just one more possession with a place in the order of things. Cared for, but without love, without warmth. Lisa had always known it, but never rebelled. Been unhappy but safe. Now anger welled inside her and she grabbed an armful of clothes from the wardrobe, throwing them across the room. She swept her arm across the dresser, sending make-up, perfume, brushes, ornaments clattering on to the floor. She stood for a moment, breathing hard, exulting in the violence of her rebellion. A rebellion that had come too late, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing — a remembered scrap of schooldays Shakespeare came back to mock her. Self-pity fuelled her anger as she ripped the sheets from her mother’s bed, lifting a pillow and slamming it repeatedly against the wall until it burst and filled the air with feathers, like snowflakes on a still winter’s day. And something inside her broke, releasing all the tears that had refused to come earlier. She fell on the bed sobbing wretchedly. Her mother had no right to die! How could she have done this to her?
It was almost dark when she rolled over and realized that she had slept. The bed was still damp where she had spilled her tears. She looked around at the chaos and felt numb. Why had she been so insistent that David did not come back after the funeral? They had almost fallen out over it. But he had conceded, finally, hiding his hurt, and said he would call tomorrow. She wished he was there now. Someone to hold her, to keep her safe and warm. She shivered, realizing how cold she was, and went downstairs to turn on the fire and make herself a mug of coffee.
She tried to think dispassionately about David. He was twenty-four, good-looking with his green eyes and mane of fine red hair. A night-shift reporter on one of the London papers. She had met him a few months earlier when he had guest-lectured as an ex-student on the journalist course she was taking at college. He still lived with his parents. Steady, middle-class people. Very pleasant, very dull. Her mother had liked David, the first boyfriend she had allowed her. He was safe and sensible. ‘That boy’s got his head screwed on,’ she used to say. But Lisa kept seeing him thirty years on, a clone of his father. Safe, sensible, dull.
She cupped her hands round the mug. There had to be something else. Nice! It was the word her mother used to describe everyone and everything that offered no risk. What she meant was safe. Lisa reflected that there must be a lot of her mother in her. It was what drew her, too, like a moth to a light. Safety. Only, she knew it was an illusion.
She wandered through to the living room. On the mantelpiece stood a framed photograph of herself aged twelve. A child with a pleated pony tail and a neatly pressed school uniform. Where was that little girl now? Time. It all seemed to slip away, like a shadow at the end of the day. She felt more like eighty than eighteen. As though her life was already over.
She gazed for some time at the photograph before she remembered the trunk in the attic. Years ago, as a child, she had found and opened it. She could have been no more than five or six. But she remembered the photographs, dozens of them in albums and a shoebox, faded black and white prints. There had been all manner of papers and documents in it, and an old jewellery box. Her mother had found her there with the trunk open and screamed at her and slapped her face. Never was she to go near that trunk again. She was confined to her room for the rest of the day. Some weeks later, while her mother was in the garden, she had crept back to the attic to discover that the trunk had been made secure with a heavy padlock.
The trunk was still there, behind a pile of cardboard boxes, thick with dust, untouched for years — perhaps since the time her mother had first padlocked it. The bulb in the attic had blown, and Lisa had to manoeuvre carefully by torchlight. She tugged at the padlock ineffectually and wondered where her mother might have kept the key.
She turned the house upside down but could find nothing that resembled the key she was looking for. The phone started to ring, loud and insistent in the empty house. It stopped Lisa in her tracks, her heart thumping. It could only be David. She stood uncertainly for a moment, then decided to let it ring out. Finally, she took a hammer and chisel from the toolbox under the sink and carried them up to the attic. Balancing the torch on a nearby box, she directed the beam on to the padlock and set about trying to break the lock. She quickly realized that wasn’t going to work, and turned to the clasp on the trunk itself, gouging with the chisel at the wood behind it. It took ten minutes of hacking and splintering before finally it broke free. Then she paused, breathless, almost afraid now to open it. With trembling hands she took the torch and lifted the lid on the past she thought had been buried with her mother.
A couple of layers of dry brown paper covered the contents. She tore them away, revealing again those things she had seen as a child. The pile of old photo albums, the jewellery box, an old rusted deed box, a shoebox filled with loose photographs — her mother as a child on holiday with her parents somewhere. A beach, an old-fashioned guest house, faces Lisa had never seen. Faces of people long dead. A fox terrier being cuddled lovingly by a small girl with hair tied back in ribbons. She put the box down, and lifted out a bundle of old, faded newspapers, which she laid aside without a second glance.
Then she took out the first of the albums, her mouth dry as she opened it. A confusion of more strange faces looked back at her. People standing in awkward groups grinning at the camera. Men in ill-fitting morning suits hired for the day. Her mother in white, smiling, almost beautiful. Lisa hardly dared look at the face of the man standing proudly beside her. A young, shy face, smiling nervously. A tall man with short dark hair, leaning slightly to one side, awkwardly holding the hand of his bride. Lisa’s father.
She suffered a feeling of anticlimax. And, yet, what had she expected? He was in army dress uniform, a very ordinary-looking man. She noticed several more uniforms among the guests as she flicked through the pages. Bride and groom cutting the cake. Then a full-sized close-up of the happy couple, arms linked, each with a glass of champagne. She examined her father more closely. He looked no more than twenty or twenty-one. There was something, she thought now, familiar about the face. Something about the eyes. Piercing, looking straight into hers. Then, quite suddenly, she felt every hair on the back of her neck stand up, her scalp tightening, the shock of it bringing the sting of tears to her eyes. Staring back at her, in the yellow light of the torch, was the face of the man she’d seen standing under the trees in the churchyard. A tear splashed on to the page. Her whisper filled the dark. ‘He’s alive!’
Four hundred miles away in a small, darkened room on the top floor of a building off the Falls Road in Belfast, Elliot’s face was drawn from a large beige envelope. The face was older than in the wedding photographs, and had by now acquired its distinctive scar. The photograph was placed in the centre of a bare wooden table. There were three men seated around it. The man who had taken the print from the envelope turned it through ninety degrees in order that the others could see it clearly.
‘John Alexander Elliot.’ He spoke with a thick Belfast brogue. ‘Ex-British army. Now freelancing. He killed McAlliskey. And O’Neil.’ He paused. ‘We want him dead.’
Chapter Four
Elliot pulled up his collar against the cold London night and turned into Dean Street. He found the Korean restaurant halfway up on the right. A pretty oriental girl in a long black skirt approached as he entered. ‘A table for one?’
‘I’m meeting someone. Mr Ang Yuon. He booked the table.’
‘Thank you very much. He is waiting for you.’ She took his coat. ‘You follow me, please.’ She led him through the bamboo and ricepaper partitions to a black, lacquered table in a discreet corner at the rear of the restaurant.
Ang Yuon rose to greet him. He was a small dapper man, black hair streaked with grey. His face was pale, cheeks peppered by ugly pockmarks, but remarkably unlined. Elliot thought him about forty, though he looked younger. Fine slender hands. Manicured nails. He smiled, but only with his mouth. The eyes remained dark and impenetrable. Elliot thought he detected in them a deep sadness. ‘Mistah Elliot. I am happy you could come.’ The trace of an American accent. His handshake was clammy.
Elliot nodded. ‘Mr Yuon.’
‘No.’ He smiled again. ‘Mistah Ang. In Cambodia first name is last, last name is first. Please sit.’ Elliot felt uncomfortable about this encounter. The call had come from his usual contact, but the circumstances of the meeting were unusual.
‘You know Korean food?’ Elliot shook his head. ‘Shall I order?’
‘Sure.’
Ang waved the waitress over and ordered something called boolkogi with steamed rice, and yachi bokum. Then he smiled again at Elliot. ‘You are very ruthless man, Mistah Elliot.’
Elliot remained impassive. ‘Is that so?’
‘Oh, I know all about you. Shall I tell you?’
‘I’ll take your word for it.’
Ang shrugged. ‘You know nothing of me.’
Elliot clasped his hands under his chin. ‘You’re a wealthy Cambodian, Mr Ang — politician or businessman. Probably corrupt. You’re about forty, and you’ve never done a day’s physical labour in your life.’
Ang raised an eyebrow. ‘And how would you know that?’
‘That you’ve never worked the paddy fields? Your hands, Mr Ang. Hands tell you a lot about a man.’
Ang glanced at his hands then looked at him thoughtfully for a moment. ‘Corrupt?’
‘Nobody ever got wealthy in Cambodia without being corrupt. And I’d say you probably did well out of the Americans.’
Ang’s expression hardened. ‘There are worse things than corruption — or Americans.’
Elliot said evenly, ‘The Khmer Rouge would never have taken power if the Americans had not brought down the Prince.’
Ang was irritated now. ‘I did not ask you here to argue politics, Mistah Elliot.’ He paused to collect himself. ‘And wealthy?’
Elliot inclined his head in a slight ironic gesture. ‘The manicure, the cut of your suit, the quality of your English. And if you didn’t have money you couldn’t afford me.’
A waitress brought small round dishes of soy sauce and spring onion, a large dish filled with strips of raw marinated beef, and a hotplate which she placed on one side before lighting a gas ring beneath it.
‘Chopsticks?’ Ang asked Elliot.
‘Sure.’
The girl smiled and brought them each a pair of finely engraved ivory chopsticks. She returned with a bowl of shredded Korean vegetables, soaked in a bitter dressing, then started arranging the meat on the hotplate with a pair of wooden chopsticks. The beef sizzled and spat as she moved it around, and the air was filled with a delicious aroma of exotic spices. Two bowls of steamed rice were brought before she served them the cooked meat, bowed and took her leave. Elliot tried it. Ang watched.
‘Good?’
Elliot nodded. It was. ‘Excellent.’
They helped themselves to rice and vegetables and Ang arranged more meat on the hotplate. Two small jugs of warm sake arrived. Ang poured them each a cup and raised his. ‘To a profitable relationship,’ he said.
Elliot sipped his sake. ‘I’ll wait till I hear what the deal is.’
Ang drained his cup in a single draught. ‘What do you know about Cambodia, Mistah Elliot? Or should I say, Democratic Kampuchea?’ He could not hide the bitterness in his voice.
Elliot shrugged. ‘Since the Khmer Rouge took over, not much. Except that they seem to be killing a lot of people.’
‘Not a lot, Mistah Elliot. Millions.’
‘An exaggeration, I think, Mr Ang.’
‘No. The stories have been confirmed by the refugees coming across the northern border into Thailand. And they have come in their thousands. I know. I have spent a lot of time in the refugee camps there, Mistah Elliot, off and on for more than three years.’
‘You don’t look much like a refugee to me.’
‘Perhaps not. But I am, nonetheless.’
‘A rich refugee.’
If Ang detected Elliot’s sarcasm he gave no sign of it. ‘As you supposed, I was not without influence with the Americans. I succeeded in getting most of my money out of the country in the months before Phnom Penh fell to the Khmer Rouge.’
‘And yourself with the American evacuation, no doubt.’
‘Yes.’
Elliot detected a moment of pain in the Cambodian’s eyes.
‘Unfortunately my influence did not extend to the evacuation of my family.’ Ang glanced at Elliot and saw the contempt flicker across his face. A look he had seen on many faces since 1975. He examined his hands. ‘My wife, Serey. My daughter, Ny. She will be seventeen now. And Hau, my son. He will be twelve.’
‘If they are still alive.’
‘Oh, they are still alive.’ The light of hope burned brightly for a moment in Ang’s eyes.
‘How can you know that?’
‘I did not spend all that time in the refugee camps because I had to, Mistah Elliot. I have American citizenship now.’
‘Amazing what money can buy — and what it can’t.’
Ang faltered only momentarily. ‘I was there through choice. I talked to hundreds, maybe thousands, of refugees. They all told the same stories of what was happening in Cambodia — of the atrocities these murderers are perpetrating in my country.’
Elliot recalled the infamous Nixon pronouncement after the US bombing of Cambodia in 1970 — Cambodia is the Nixon doctrine in its purest form. No involvement. As if bombs were somehow neutral.
Ang was still talking. ‘There were always those in the camps seeking news of relatives or friends. Some were lucky, most were not.’
‘And you?’ Elliot found himself interested, in spite of an instinctive dislike of Ang.
‘I had almost given up.’ He remembered the hopelessness of it all. The skeletal figures with their pathetic bundles of ragged possessions who came out of the jungle day after day. Some had lost wives or husbands, fathers and mothers, sons and daughters. They thought they had escaped to freedom, when all that awaited them were the camps, and the indifference of the West. Barbed wire, rows of long insanitary huts. A Thai regime that didn’t want them was determined to keep them there, without home or country.
‘Until six weeks ago,’ he said. ‘I had a reported sighting at a commune north of Siem Reap. A woman who had known my wife in Phnom Penh. It was promising, but uncertain.’ He had recalled the woman vaguely. Her children had gone to school with his. She had told him it could have been his wife she saw. But one face looked much like another in the communes, she said. Blank. People did not speak. Recognition was dangerous. The past could kill. ‘I still needed confirmation. I got it ten days ago. No doubts. My wife is alive. And my daughter.’ He paused. ‘My son I do not know about.’ He sat silent for a long time, then he looked up. ‘Mistah Elliot, I will pay you half a million US dollars — everything I have left — if you will go into Cambodia and get them out.’
Chapter Five
The sun had been merciless, beating down in waves like physical blows, her only protection the conical hat and ragged black pyjamas she wore. Hands like leather worked the wooden shaft of the hoe to a rhythm that was as much a part of her now as breathing.
Serey had lost track of the passage of time since her death. For that was how she saw her life under the Khmer Rouge. A living death. An existence, nothing more. The endless hours in the fields, the indoctrination sessions when the sun went down. Young fanatics haranguing the new breed of Cambodians. Automatons serving the needs of Angkar — the Organization. Mercifully, these had become less frequent since moving to this commune. At first the speakers had been seductive, appealing to those with an education, those with technical, medical, administrative skills, to come forward and serve Angkar on a higher plane. Angkar needs you, they said. Angkar will reward you. And at first there had been those who succumbed. But they all knew now that a call to Angkar meant torture and mutilation in the woods. A bayonet in the stomach or, if you were lucky, a bullet in the head. The weak, the sick, all those who could not work went to Angkar.
There was no conversation, no friendly chatter in the fields, no eye contact, lest it be seen by the guards who watched them from the shade of the trees. The only sound was the scraping of countless hoes in the dry earth, and the idle talk of the guards as they smoked or ate from hampers of fruit and meat and rice. Serey could not remember the last time she had eaten fresh meat. She had eaten grubs, worms, all manner of insects, anything she knew would provide her with at least some protein. And there had been the berries she picked in the jungle, the tubers she dug from the earth. The three meagre portions of rice they were provided with each day would never have sustained her. But still she had the sores on her arms and legs and face that came from vitamin and protein deficiencies.
Ten metres away an old man buckled at the knees and fell face first into the earth. The nearest of the guards shouted at him to get up. He did not stir. The guard approached and kicked him in the ribs and struck him several times across the back with a bamboo staff. The faintest groan escaped the old man’s lips. At a signal from the first, a second guard came across and they dragged him away. Another sacrifice to Angkar. There was not the faintest flicker of acknowledgement among those left hoeing. Not a head turned. The rhythm of the hoes continued unbroken. In the early days Serey had heard stories of guards dragging people into the woods, using bayonets to cut open their stomachs. It was said they removed the livers of their still-living victims and ate them raw. She had found it hard to believe. Now she believed anything, and nothing.
Her back ached, her whole being ached, but she no longer felt the pain. Many times she had wished they would come and take her to Angkar. It would, perhaps, have been easier. But she’d had to stay strong for Ny, even though she could no longer acknowledge her as her daughter. Nor Ny her as her mother. Families divided loyalties. They owed loyalty only to Angkar.
It was a miracle that she and Ny were still together after the frequent moves from commune to commune. Somehow they had always contrived to be aboard the same truck. Here they even shared the same hut — with a dozen others. But their only contact was the occasional exchange of glances, a brushing of hands as they passed. Hau, she knew, was in a commune across the river. She had seen him once, sitting in the back of a truckful of guards as it rumbled through their village. He had an automatic rifle slung across his shoulder, and wore a kramar — the red, chequered headscarf of the Khmer Rouge. Twelve years old and they had made him one of them. He had seen her, too, she was sure. But he had turned his face away. She wondered if he, like some of the other children, had been made to pick out those whose faces he did not like, and watch as plastic bags were pulled over their heads to suffocate them.
It was almost dark as the siren sounded and they shuffled from the field back to the village and their respective huts. The women in Serey’s hut ate their rice in silence, slowly, without passion. Serey glanced at Ny and felt her eyes fill with tears. She had more flesh on her bones than the others, fewer sores, a lustre to her hair and a burning hatred in her eyes. Seventeen and beautiful — or should have been. So many things she should have been. So much that life should have offered.
Ny was aware of her mother looking at her, but kept her eyes down, ashamed to meet her mother’s gaze. She was consumed by shame, and hatred for the young cadre who would come for her before very much longer.
Most of the women were asleep, curled up on the hard wooden floor, when she heard the creak of his step on the ladder. Then he appeared in the open doorway and nodded curtly. Silently, she arose and followed him down the steps. He smiled at her. ‘How are you tonight?’
‘Well,’ she said.
He took her arm and led her quickly between the stilts of the huts, beyond the perimeter of the village and into the woods to the place he always took her.
‘Undress,’ he said. She did so, without a word, as he slipped out of his black pyjamas. She lay down without being told. She knew the routine well. First he kissed her, his lips wet, his tongue probing her mouth. She had to fight to keep down the bile. His hands slipped easily over her breasts, pinching, squeezing. She felt the pressure of his erection against her stomach and clenched her teeth as he entered her, digging her nails into his back in what he always mistook for passion. He was quickly spent, grunting as he came inside her, then sighing, breathless, allowing his full weight to press down on her. He lay for a short while until he softened and then withdrew, kissing her lightly on the lips and brushing her long hair back from her eyes. ‘You’re a good girl,’ he said.
He got up and dressed quickly. She shivered, though the night was warm, wishing she could wash it all away. From her body and her mind. When she had dressed he handed her a small cloth sack of food, some dried meat and fruit, an extra portion of rice. Ny was never quite sure whether it was a payment or a penance, for afterwards, passion spent, he always seemed embarrassed. She took the sack without a word and hurried back to the hut.
Serey heard her coming in, felt the warmth of her closeness as she leant beside her and filled her bowl with half the contents of the sack. Serey feigned sleep, as she always did. Nothing was ever acknowledged between them. The shame would have been unbearable.
Chapter Six
I
David tutted irritably. ‘Well, why didn’t you answer?’
‘I was in the attic,’ she lied.
‘But I let it ring for ages.’
‘Oh David, never mind! I want you to look at these.’ She had the contents of the trunk spread across the table in the dining room. She opened the wedding album.
‘Wedding photographs,’ he said, without enthusiasm. He was tired. He had only come off the night shift at seven that morning, and she had phoned him at home at eight. He should have been asleep by now. But there had been an urgent quality in her voice. So he had driven over and found her in a state he could only describe as near-euphoria. Sometimes death affected people that way. Down one minute, on a high the next. He had been prepared to play the role of comforter, but had not been prepared for this. She stabbed at a picture of the bride and groom.
‘Look,’ she said.
He recognized her mother. Very young, quite pretty, not at all like the haggard, pinched woman he had known. He shrugged. ‘What do you want me to say? It’s your mother.’
‘Not my mother! The groom!’ She could hardly contain her impatience.
He looked at the groom without interest. ‘So, it’s your father, I suppose.’
‘Don’t you recognize him?’
David almost laughed. ‘How could I recognize him? He’s been dead for years. Look, Lisa, you didn’t get me all the way down here just to look at old wedding photographs, did you?’
But she was insistent. ‘Look again, David, please!’ He sighed and looked at the face more closely. And, oddly, there did seem something familiar about him, now that he gave the photo more attention. Lisa saw his frown. ‘See, you have seen him before, haven’t you?’
He was reluctant to admit his doubt. ‘It’s not possible.’
‘At the churchyard yesterday. The man under the trees. The one with the scar.’ She was desperate for confirmation, needed to know she wasn’t imagining it. He frowned uneasily as he recalled the face of the man he had seen standing in the rain. And his sense of unease deepened as he remembered the way the man had looked at Lisa.
‘This guy doesn’t have a scar,’ he said.
‘Oh for goodness sake, David! That photograph must be twenty years old.’ She paused. ‘It’s him, isn’t it?’
‘Are you trying to tell me we saw a ghost?’
‘Did he look like a ghost to you?’ His silence spoke for him. ‘He’s alive,’ she said.
‘But it doesn’t make sense, Lisa. Why would your mother have told you he was dead? And if it was him, why didn’t he come over and speak to you?’
Lisa shook her head in frustration. ‘I don’t know.’ They were questions that had been rattling around her head all night, a night without sleep, a night of so many questions and so few answers. She slumped wearily into a chair. ‘I phoned my mother’s lawyer first thing. I’ve made an appointment to see him at twelve. Will you come with me?’
David saw a day without sleep, and a long, tiring night ahead of him in the newsroom. But he nodded. It was as well to get all this out of the way as soon as possible. ‘Well, I suppose if anyone can tell you the truth he can.’
Lisa closed her eyes, a wave of relief and fatigue sweeping over her. At least with David there she wouldn’t feel quite so alone, quite so vulnerable.
‘Lisa...’ Something in David’s voice made her open her eyes sharply. He had been leafing idly through the bundle of old newspapers. He held one up. ‘Have you seen this?’ It had never crossed her mind to look at them. There was a group photograph of four men in army uniform. A headline: VERDICT IN ADEN MASSACRE. She felt the blood rise on her cheeks as she recognized one of the men as her father.
II
Wiseman was in his sixties, with more than half an eye on retirement. His life had been one long succession of conveyancing, divorces and wills. Long gone were the heady ambitions of the student lawyer; the Bar, the Old Bailey, the triumphs and intrigues of criminal law. Instead, life had brought him to this small, seedy office in an insignificant south London legal partnership. He was the senior partner now, but it was little consolation. Nothing was more difficult in life than coming to terms with your own limitations.
This, however, was something rather different. He examined the young lady seated at the other side of his desk, a desk piled with conveyances, divorces and wills. Her thick blonde hair was cut short, swept back from a strong-featured face. Full, sensuous lips, a fine straight nose and clear blue eyes. She wore no make-up and there were deep shadows under her eyes. He supposed he wasn’t seeing her at her best, having just buried her mother. But he could see she was a good-looking girl, slim, her blouse tucked loosely into her jeans. She wore a long dark jacket which hung open, a leather satchel slung from her shoulder. Her hands were clasped between her thighs as she sat slightly forward listening earnestly. She was not at all like her mother — a bitter, brittle woman whom he had never liked.
Her young man sat back in his chair, arms folded across his chest, listening with a sort of grim detachment. Wiseman had taken an instant dislike to him, but the girl had insisted that he sit in on their meeting.
‘Of course, you realize it was your mother’s wish that you never know,’ he was saying.
‘I think she’d already gathered that,’ the young man said impatiently.
‘David,’ Lisa admonished him.
Wiseman flicked him a glance of disapproval. ‘However,’ he went on, ‘since you have found out for yourself, I don’t see any harm in telling you as much as I know.’ He scratched his chin thoughtfully. ‘It also releases me from the obligation of trying to conceal from you the source of the money your mother has left you.’
‘What money?’ David asked, suddenly interested.
‘I think, Miss Robinson, this is a matter we really should discuss in confidence.’
‘I’ve nothing to hide from David,’ Lisa said.
‘The world,’ Wiseman said evenly, ‘is full of fortune hunters.’
David contained his annoyance. ‘I am not a fortune hunter, Mr Wiseman.’
There was just the hint of amusement in Wiseman’s eyes. ‘Then you won’t be disappointed to discover that the young lady has not inherited a fortune.’ He turned back to Lisa. ‘But it is a sizeable sum.’
Lisa shook her head. ‘I don’t understand. My mother didn’t have any money.’
Wiseman clasped his hands on the desk in front of him. ‘When your mother divorced your father there was a settlement. A small monthly sum. She opened an account into which she had the money paid direct. The payments have been made, unbroken, for almost sixteen years. But for the last nine or ten years there have been additional, if infrequent, payments of considerable amounts. Your mother always refused to touch the money in that account. She told me that one day it was to go to you, but you were never to know its source.’ He paused, picking his words carefully. ‘She seemed to feel that the money was somehow... dirty. And that by denying it to herself she was in some way cleansing it for you.’
Lisa’s thoughts were confused and uncertain, as though all this was, or should have been, happening to someone else. She had grown up in a cocoon of ignorance, and now that she was breaking free of its protective shell, discovering that she wasn’t who she thought she was.
‘She did make one exception,’ Wiseman went on. ‘About four years ago. She lifted enough from the account to pay off the mortgage on the house. Naturally, she has left that to you.’
‘So what’s the balance?’ David asked.
Wiseman sighed, reluctant to impart the information in this young man’s presence. ‘I do not have an exact figure, but it is somewhere in the region of one hundred and eighty-five thousand pounds. With the house, and various other bits and pieces, the young lady should be worth over four hundred thousand.’
David whistled softly. Lisa sat motionless, filled with a great sadness. It wasn’t right, or fair. She had done nothing to deserve this. She didn’t want the money or any part of it. She wanted her mother back, along with the lost belief that her father was dead. She wanted to climb back into her shell and hide. But it was broken now and there was no way back. Wiseman cleared his throat discreetly. ‘Miss Robinson...?’
She looked at him. ‘I’m sorry?’
‘I know all this must have come as a bit of a shock to you...’
She cut in. ‘What about my father?’
‘I’m afraid I know very little about him. You’ve read the newspaper reports. You know he spent five years in a military prison after the court martial. You know as much as I do.’
‘But how did he make the payments during the years he was in prison?’
Wiseman spread his hands in a gesture that told her he could not help.
‘I want to find him,’ she said.
David looked at her, shocked. ‘Why?’
‘Because he’s my father.’
‘It might be difficult after all this time,’ Wiseman said.
Lisa looked at him defiantly. ‘You’re a lawyer. You find him. I can afford it.’
Wiseman sighed. ‘I can try, I suppose.’
David shook his head. ‘Lisa, this is ridiculous.’
Wiseman headed off a row. ‘There is one more thing you should know.’ Lisa looked at him, wondering what more there could possibly be. ‘After the divorce your mother reverted to the use of her maiden name. She was ashamed and humiliated by what your father had done, and wished to protect you. But you are still, strictly speaking, Lisa Elliot. It’s the name on your birth certificate. It was never legally changed.’
Outside, a watery winter sun cast pale shadows in the street. ‘You’re mad,’ David said, trying to keep up with her. But he had seen that determined set of her jaw before and knew she would not be argued with. For a young woman of eighteen years she could be frustratingly immature, almost childlike, with a child’s blindness to reason. The result, he knew, of an obsessively shielded upbringing. Her mother had been a strange woman locked away in a world of her own, a world of protective darkness in which she had forced her daughter to live too. He had wondered why she should unlock the door to him. Perhaps she had known she could not hold on to Lisa for ever. Perhaps she had seen him as her successor. Lisa kept walking, hardly aware of him. She just wanted to walk and walk, run if she could. He said, ‘I mean, along with the rest of them he killed a whole bunch of innocent civilians in cold blood.’
‘We don’t know that.’
‘He was found guilty, wasn’t he? They put him in prison. What more do you need to know?’
‘I want to know why.’
‘Does there have to be a why?’
‘Of course there does.’
‘What, just because he’s your father?’
She stopped suddenly, turning to face him, tears of frustration welling in her eyes. ‘Yes,’ she said defiantly. ‘Just because he’s my father!’ And she turned and ran off through the shoppers as the tears began to spill.
I
David tutted irritably. ‘Well, why didn’t you answer?’
‘I was in the attic,’ she lied.
‘But I let it ring for ages.’
‘Oh David, never mind! I want you to look at these.’ She had the contents of the trunk spread across the table in the dining room. She opened the wedding album.
‘Wedding photographs,’ he said, without enthusiasm. He was tired. He had only come off the night shift at seven that morning, and she had phoned him at home at eight. He should have been asleep by now. But there had been an urgent quality in her voice. So he had driven over and found her in a state he could only describe as near-euphoria. Sometimes death affected people that way. Down one minute, on a high the next. He had been prepared to play the role of comforter, but had not been prepared for this. She stabbed at a picture of the bride and groom.
‘Look,’ she said.
He recognized her mother. Very young, quite pretty, not at all like the haggard, pinched woman he had known. He shrugged. ‘What do you want me to say? It’s your mother.’
‘Not my mother! The groom!’ She could hardly contain her impatience.
He looked at the groom without interest. ‘So, it’s your father, I suppose.’
‘Don’t you recognize him?’
David almost laughed. ‘How could I recognize him? He’s been dead for years. Look, Lisa, you didn’t get me all the way down here just to look at old wedding photographs, did you?’
But she was insistent. ‘Look again, David, please!’ He sighed and looked at the face more closely. And, oddly, there did seem something familiar about him, now that he gave the photo more attention. Lisa saw his frown. ‘See, you have seen him before, haven’t you?’
He was reluctant to admit his doubt. ‘It’s not possible.’
‘At the churchyard yesterday. The man under the trees. The one with the scar.’ She was desperate for confirmation, needed to know she wasn’t imagining it. He frowned uneasily as he recalled the face of the man he had seen standing in the rain. And his sense of unease deepened as he remembered the way the man had looked at Lisa.
‘This guy doesn’t have a scar,’ he said.
‘Oh for goodness sake, David! That photograph must be twenty years old.’ She paused. ‘It’s him, isn’t it?’
‘Are you trying to tell me we saw a ghost?’
‘Did he look like a ghost to you?’ His silence spoke for him. ‘He’s alive,’ she said.
‘But it doesn’t make sense, Lisa. Why would your mother have told you he was dead? And if it was him, why didn’t he come over and speak to you?’
Lisa shook her head in frustration. ‘I don’t know.’ They were questions that had been rattling around her head all night, a night without sleep, a night of so many questions and so few answers. She slumped wearily into a chair. ‘I phoned my mother’s lawyer first thing. I’ve made an appointment to see him at twelve. Will you come with me?’
David saw a day without sleep, and a long, tiring night ahead of him in the newsroom. But he nodded. It was as well to get all this out of the way as soon as possible. ‘Well, I suppose if anyone can tell you the truth he can.’
Lisa closed her eyes, a wave of relief and fatigue sweeping over her. At least with David there she wouldn’t feel quite so alone, quite so vulnerable.
‘Lisa...’ Something in David’s voice made her open her eyes sharply. He had been leafing idly through the bundle of old newspapers. He held one up. ‘Have you seen this?’ It had never crossed her mind to look at them. There was a group photograph of four men in army uniform. A headline: VERDICT IN ADEN MASSACRE. She felt the blood rise on her cheeks as she recognized one of the men as her father.
II
Wiseman was in his sixties, with more than half an eye on retirement. His life had been one long succession of conveyancing, divorces and wills. Long gone were the heady ambitions of the student lawyer; the Bar, the Old Bailey, the triumphs and intrigues of criminal law. Instead, life had brought him to this small, seedy office in an insignificant south London legal partnership. He was the senior partner now, but it was little consolation. Nothing was more difficult in life than coming to terms with your own limitations.
This, however, was something rather different. He examined the young lady seated at the other side of his desk, a desk piled with conveyances, divorces and wills. Her thick blonde hair was cut short, swept back from a strong-featured face. Full, sensuous lips, a fine straight nose and clear blue eyes. She wore no make-up and there were deep shadows under her eyes. He supposed he wasn’t seeing her at her best, having just buried her mother. But he could see she was a good-looking girl, slim, her blouse tucked loosely into her jeans. She wore a long dark jacket which hung open, a leather satchel slung from her shoulder. Her hands were clasped between her thighs as she sat slightly forward listening earnestly. She was not at all like her mother — a bitter, brittle woman whom he had never liked.
Her young man sat back in his chair, arms folded across his chest, listening with a sort of grim detachment. Wiseman had taken an instant dislike to him, but the girl had insisted that he sit in on their meeting.
‘Of course, you realize it was your mother’s wish that you never know,’ he was saying.
‘I think she’d already gathered that,’ the young man said impatiently.
‘David,’ Lisa admonished him.
Wiseman flicked him a glance of disapproval. ‘However,’ he went on, ‘since you have found out for yourself, I don’t see any harm in telling you as much as I know.’ He scratched his chin thoughtfully. ‘It also releases me from the obligation of trying to conceal from you the source of the money your mother has left you.’
‘What money?’ David asked, suddenly interested.
‘I think, Miss Robinson, this is a matter we really should discuss in confidence.’
‘I’ve nothing to hide from David,’ Lisa said.
‘The world,’ Wiseman said evenly, ‘is full of fortune hunters.’
David contained his annoyance. ‘I am not a fortune hunter, Mr Wiseman.’
There was just the hint of amusement in Wiseman’s eyes. ‘Then you won’t be disappointed to discover that the young lady has not inherited a fortune.’ He turned back to Lisa. ‘But it is a sizeable sum.’
Lisa shook her head. ‘I don’t understand. My mother didn’t have any money.’
Wiseman clasped his hands on the desk in front of him. ‘When your mother divorced your father there was a settlement. A small monthly sum. She opened an account into which she had the money paid direct. The payments have been made, unbroken, for almost sixteen years. But for the last nine or ten years there have been additional, if infrequent, payments of considerable amounts. Your mother always refused to touch the money in that account. She told me that one day it was to go to you, but you were never to know its source.’ He paused, picking his words carefully. ‘She seemed to feel that the money was somehow... dirty. And that by denying it to herself she was in some way cleansing it for you.’
Lisa’s thoughts were confused and uncertain, as though all this was, or should have been, happening to someone else. She had grown up in a cocoon of ignorance, and now that she was breaking free of its protective shell, discovering that she wasn’t who she thought she was.
‘She did make one exception,’ Wiseman went on. ‘About four years ago. She lifted enough from the account to pay off the mortgage on the house. Naturally, she has left that to you.’
‘So what’s the balance?’ David asked.
Wiseman sighed, reluctant to impart the information in this young man’s presence. ‘I do not have an exact figure, but it is somewhere in the region of one hundred and eighty-five thousand pounds. With the house, and various other bits and pieces, the young lady should be worth over four hundred thousand.’
David whistled softly. Lisa sat motionless, filled with a great sadness. It wasn’t right, or fair. She had done nothing to deserve this. She didn’t want the money or any part of it. She wanted her mother back, along with the lost belief that her father was dead. She wanted to climb back into her shell and hide. But it was broken now and there was no way back. Wiseman cleared his throat discreetly. ‘Miss Robinson...?’
She looked at him. ‘I’m sorry?’
‘I know all this must have come as a bit of a shock to you...’
She cut in. ‘What about my father?’
‘I’m afraid I know very little about him. You’ve read the newspaper reports. You know he spent five years in a military prison after the court martial. You know as much as I do.’
‘But how did he make the payments during the years he was in prison?’
Wiseman spread his hands in a gesture that told her he could not help.
‘I want to find him,’ she said.
David looked at her, shocked. ‘Why?’
‘Because he’s my father.’
‘It might be difficult after all this time,’ Wiseman said.
Lisa looked at him defiantly. ‘You’re a lawyer. You find him. I can afford it.’
Wiseman sighed. ‘I can try, I suppose.’
David shook his head. ‘Lisa, this is ridiculous.’
Wiseman headed off a row. ‘There is one more thing you should know.’ Lisa looked at him, wondering what more there could possibly be. ‘After the divorce your mother reverted to the use of her maiden name. She was ashamed and humiliated by what your father had done, and wished to protect you. But you are still, strictly speaking, Lisa Elliot. It’s the name on your birth certificate. It was never legally changed.’
Outside, a watery winter sun cast pale shadows in the street. ‘You’re mad,’ David said, trying to keep up with her. But he had seen that determined set of her jaw before and knew she would not be argued with. For a young woman of eighteen years she could be frustratingly immature, almost childlike, with a child’s blindness to reason. The result, he knew, of an obsessively shielded upbringing. Her mother had been a strange woman locked away in a world of her own, a world of protective darkness in which she had forced her daughter to live too. He had wondered why she should unlock the door to him. Perhaps she had known she could not hold on to Lisa for ever. Perhaps she had seen him as her successor. Lisa kept walking, hardly aware of him. She just wanted to walk and walk, run if she could. He said, ‘I mean, along with the rest of them he killed a whole bunch of innocent civilians in cold blood.’
‘We don’t know that.’
‘He was found guilty, wasn’t he? They put him in prison. What more do you need to know?’
‘I want to know why.’
‘Does there have to be a why?’
‘Of course there does.’
‘What, just because he’s your father?’
She stopped suddenly, turning to face him, tears of frustration welling in her eyes. ‘Yes,’ she said defiantly. ‘Just because he’s my father!’ And she turned and ran off through the shoppers as the tears began to spill.
Chapter Seven
A rare blink of winter sunshine sparkled on the slow-moving waters of the Thames. The slightest breeze rattled among the leafless branches of the willows that wept along the embankment. London seemed a long way away here, in the quiet affluence of this Upper Thames village. In the summer, lovers would pass idly by in punts, drifting gently among the backwaters, somnolent and languid in the afternoon sun. Picnics on the embankment, the murmur of bees. But now it was cold, deserted, save for one old man swaddled in coat and scarf walking an equally old dog along the riverside.
Elliot watched them absently from the warmth of the sun lounge, large windows that in hot weather would open on to the garden, now providing a winter panorama across the river. ‘You still take lemonade in your whisky?’ Blair turned from the drinks cabinet.
‘Nothing changes,’ Elliot said.
Blair grinned. ‘Heathen!’ He turned back to pour lemonade with reluctance into a generous measure of amber liquid. He was a tough, wiry, old Scot approaching his middle fifties, a fine head of grey hair over a lean, tanned face. He wore a faded army-green pullover, leather patches at the elbow, and a pair of baggy trousers that concertinaed over dirty white tennis shoes. ‘How’d it go in Africa?’
‘Bloody disastrous.’ Elliot ran a finger gently along the line of his scar. Even after all this time it still occasionally hurt, like toothache. ‘Lost nearly half my men before we crossed the border.’ He snorted his disgust. ‘Freedom fighters! A rabble. No training, no discipline, no balls. Last time I’ll take on a job like that. Barely got out alive myself. Didn’t get bloody paid, either!’
Blair chuckled. ‘Times are tough, eh?’ He handed Elliot his whisky and Elliot noticed he hadn’t poured one for himself.
‘You not joining me?’
‘Too early.’ Blair eased himself into a deep leather armchair. He paused, his smile fading. ‘I saw the death notice in the paper.’ Elliot nodded. ‘I’m sorry.’
‘Don’t be. It was all too long ago to mean anything now.’
Blair eyed the younger man with affection. ‘What about the girl?’
‘She’s well provided for.’ Elliot sipped his drink. ‘I need weapons and kit.’
Blair smiled ruefully. No matter how hard you tried you never got beneath the skin. ‘Where this time?’
‘Thailand.’
Blair whistled his surprise. ‘Jesus Christ! What are you doing in Thailand?’
‘Thailand’s just base. I’m taking a team into Cambodia.’
The older man laughed. ‘Taking on the Khmer Rouge single-handed, are we?’
Elliot smiled. ‘It’s a small private job. Man’s paying me a lot of money to go in and get his family out.’
‘How far in?’
‘About a week there, a week back. It’ll be a small team. Just three of us. I’ll want automatics, pistols, grenades, knives, kit, radio, rations and medical supplies. And maps. Can you do it?’
‘Thailand’s tricky. Can’t get anything in. Have to procure locally.’
‘I don’t want to know how difficult it is, I want to know if you can do it.’
‘’Course I can do it. Have you ever know your old sergeant to let you down?’ He rose. ‘I think I will have that drink.’ He crossed to the cabinet to pour himself a stiff measure. ‘Can’t guarantee what I get you, though. Be either Russian or American. Probably Russian.’
‘I’d prefer American.’
‘Might cost more.’
‘So, it’ll cost more.’
Blair sipped his whisky and rolled it around his mouth. ‘Who are you taking?’
‘Slattery.’
‘That bloody Aussie! Man, he’s aff his heid!’
‘He’s good. I phoned Sydney this morning. I’m meeting him in Bangkok.’
Blair shook his head. ‘The two of you loose in Bangkok. That would be worth seeing.’ Pause. ‘Who else?’
‘A pal of Slattery’s. A Yank called McCue. Vietnam vet. Ex-Big Red One. Tunnel Rat. Stayed on in Bangkok after the war.’
‘When you going?’
‘Flying out later this week. I want to be ready to move in a fortnight.’
Blair emptied his glass. ‘You’re aff your heid, man!’ Another pause. ‘Don’t suppose you’d like to take a fourth?’
Elliot grinned. ‘You’re too bloody old, Sam.’
‘I’m as fit as you are.’
‘No chance. The only place you’re going to die now is in your bed.’
Chapter Eight
Lisa had not gone back to college. The Christmas holidays were coming up and, anyway, she couldn’t have faced it. The sympathy of her friends, the questions she wouldn’t want to answer. And she was no longer sure she was the person she had been just a week ago. College, and a future in journalism, seemed unimportant, trivial.
She had wandered around the house for days, unable to settle, picking up a book, reading a few pages then laying it aside. She had phoned Wiseman several times, but he had no news. David had called every day and she had put him off each time. Somehow he belonged to the person she had been before, to Lisa Robinson, the shy orphaned eighteen-year-old who had stood so helplessly at her mother’s graveside only a few days earlier. Lisa Elliot was someone else. Who that person was, she could not yet tell. Just that she was different. She had money, independence, and a father who’d killed women and children in cold blood.
Then, on the fourth day, came the call she had been waiting for. Wiseman’s voice at the other end of the line. ‘We can’t guarantee,’ he said, ‘that he’ll still be there. But it’s the last address that we can find.’
Lisa’s mouth was dry and her hands trembled as she stepped out of the taxi into the King’s Road. She had not wanted to take the cab right to the door. She needed time to walk, collect her thoughts, summon the courage to make her way to the mews address Wiseman had given her, to knock on the door and face the man she had always thought was dead. Her father.
She realised very quickly that had been a mistake. All she’d done was make time for her courage to fail. What would she say to him? What if he didn’t want to know, and shut the door in her face? What would she do then? She walked slowly, dreamlike, through the late evening Christmas shoppers, tinsel flashing in shop windows, Christmas lights tinting the faces of passers-by. She caught a glimpse of her reflection in a window. A pale, frightened face staring back from the glass. She focused beyond the reflection. An ice-cream parlour. And she shivered. A little girl holding her Daddy’s hand as he bought her a two-flavour cone, her face alight with pleasure, her father’s smile of fond indulgence. Ice cream at Christmas. Moments Lisa had never known. She caught her reflection again and looked quickly away.
Now or never.
The cobbled mews lane was deserted, feeble pools of yellow light falling from old-fashioned coach lamps mounted on each cottage wall. One or two lights shone in upper windows. A red Porsche stood parked on her left as she entered through an archway. You needed money to own a mews house here.
Number twenty-three had a lacquered, oak-panelled door. There was no name plate, no light in the upper windows. She pressed the buzzer and heard it sound faintly within. She waited, but already she knew the house was empty. She tried again, an automatic response, and stepped back to look up. The darkness in the windows mirrored her despair. She turned away.
A net curtain flickered at an upper window as her footsteps receded down the mews.
‘She’s gone. Probably some woman he’s been two-timing.’ The man turned away from the window as his companion again turned on the flashlight and quickly completed the wiring Lisa’s arrival had interrupted. He lifted the top casing of the telephone answering machine and slipped it carefully back in place, dexterously tightening the screws at all four corners.
‘That’s it,’ he said, and placed each of the specialist tools of his trade into the pockets of a folding canvas carrier which he rolled up and dropped into a soft leather holdall. He switched off the flashlight. ‘Let’s get out of here.’
The other man lifted the holdall and patted the answering machine gently with his gloved hand. He grinned. ‘Merry Christmas, Mr Elliot.’
Chapter Nine
Elliot looked down as his plane circled before coming in to land at Bangkok’s Don Muang international airport. Below, the paddy fields caught and reflected the light of the moon, hundreds of silver-paper shapes arranged in random geometric patterns. The airport was crowded and hot. A sticky heat you could almost touch. It came as a shock after the hours of incarceration in the air-conditioned fuselage of the aircraft that had left London shivering at minus ten. Elliot felt his clothes go limp. He had a long, irritating wait to clear customs and immigration, Thai officers inspecting him with inscrutable dark eyes. Slattery was waiting for him at the international arrivals gate in a short-sleeved, sweat-stained shirt.
‘Hey, chief!’ His big hand grasped Elliot’s. Elliot had a great affection for this voluble Aussie, and a great respect too. As a soldier of fortune in the early days of the war in Nam he had adapted quickly and easily to the guerrilla tactics of the VC, realizing long before the Americans that this would be no conventional war for conventional soldiers.
Elliot grinned. ‘How are you, you ugly bastard?’
‘Getting uglier.’ Slattery pulled playfully at Elliot’s scarred cheek. ‘And you get prettier every time I see you.’
He was a man of indeterminate years, though probably in his early forties. His coarse blonde hair had been crew-cut to little more than a stubble. He was short, about five-nine, but broad-built, stocky, with enormous strength and stamina. He had a striking face, squat and ugly, made almost remarkable by the pale grey of his eyes. His deep tan was ruddy rather than brown, his eyebrows bleached nearly white by the unrelenting Australian sun. But Elliot’s first impression was that he had lost weight.
Slattery drove the battered Peugeot hire car with a deceptive carelessness, smoking constantly, one hand on the wheel, dodging in and out of the traffic, cursing other drivers. He talked incessantly. ‘There I was, all set to spend the summer on the beach, a couple of girls lined up. You know, the kind who know how to amuse themselves when I’m not in the mood. House rented right on the surf, king-sized bed for three, the works. And then I get your call. Jesus! There goes my summer. And there go the girls. So then I think, okay, a bit of R and R in Bangkok. Can’t be bad. How long we got before we hit the shit?’
‘A week to ten days.’ Elliot had listened to all this in brooding silence.
‘Jeez! Time enough to catch the clap and take a cure.’ Slattery laughed too loudly. ‘What’s the agenda?’
‘I want to see your man, McCue.’
‘Sure. Tomorrow do?’
‘Now.’
‘Aw, hey, chief. The night’s young, and so are the women. I thought we’d break a bit of sweat our first night.’
‘I want to see him tonight.’ Elliot spoke quietly. Slattery glanced at him.
‘Something bugging you, chief?’
Elliot said, ‘I don’t rate our chances on this trip at better than fifty-fifty. I want you and the Yank to be under no illusions. If either of you are going to pull out I want it to be tonight. I’ll need time to recruit another team. And I want to see this guy for myself before I give him the green light.’
Slattery nodded and felt a tightening across his chest. He had calculated the odds differently, had known from the first that this outing would be his last. A quick death in action, adrenalin pumping. It was preferable to the lingering death sentence passed on him by the young doctor. ‘A wee touch of cancer,’ Slattery had joked. But the doctor had not smiled. He had been as cold and clinical as the tiles in his surgery.
‘You have six months to a year, Mr Slattery, if you respond to treatment.’
‘Fuck the treatment,’ Slattery had told him.
Elliot’s call had come like a beacon in the darkness. The prospect of a summer on the beach had loomed like a shroud waiting slowly to descend. There had been no girls, no king-sized bed, just long hot months of lonely boredom stretching ahead, leading inexorably towards the inevitable.
‘Well, I reckon you can count me in, chief,’ he said brightly. ‘You know me. Try anything once. Suck it and see, eh?’
Elliot smiled. Slattery had a habit of picking up odd clichés, using one till he had burned it out, and then picking up another. On their last outing it had been bite on the bullet, the time before, the nature of the beast. Everything had been the goddamned nature of the beast! Now he was sucking it and seeing. But Elliot had also detected a false bravura in the Australian, a chill behind his grey eyes that the grin could not hide. It worried him a little, but he said nothing.
They drove the rest of the way in a silence punctuated by Slattery’s curses, down Rajadamri Road, past the Royal Sports Club on the right and Lumpini Park a little further down on the left. The traffic was still heavy, buses, trucks, private cars, taxis and tuk-tuks — small three-wheeler samlors, extended motor-scooters with two seats at the back for passengers. Great multi-storey blocks rose up now on either side of them, cheek by jowl with the mean little rows of Chinese and Muslim shops, multicoloured, multilingual signs hanging out over shambolic broken pavements from which rose the stench of the sewers below.
They crossed Rama IV Road at a busy junction and turned into Silom Road, where the nightlife was gathering momentum in the sticky heat. Past Patpong Road with its noisy clubs and bars, sexual floorshows and hundreds of bar girls who were little more than children. Slattery pulled in outside the Narai Hotel. It towered above them, rising into the inky black of the south-east Asian night. Elliot got out and Slattery pushed his case at him. ‘You check in, chief. I’ll park the car then come and find you.’
The chill of the air conditioning beyond the sliding glass doors was delicious after the humidity outside. Tourists sat drinking coffee in a pizzeria coffee shop while young girls, white robes glowing in the ultraviolet of the Don Juan bar, smiled alluringly as he passed. An incongruous Christmas tree sat in the lobby, erected no doubt to make Western tourists feel at home. It seemed peculiarly out of place in this deeply Buddhist country. Elliot filled out the paperwork at the reception desk, feeling tired for the first time. It was almost ten o’clock, though it was not yet three back in London, and he had been in the air for more than thirteen hours. He never slept on aeroplanes.
It was a relief to get to his room. He sank back on the bed and closed his eyes, the drone of aircraft engines still in his ears. A scraping noise at his door made him sit up abruptly. A small card had been slipped beneath it from the corridor. Elliot picked it up and smiled wearily. A massage parlour somewhere in Chinatown. They didn’t waste any time. A sharp knock at the door startled him. Slattery stood there grinning. ‘Saw some greaseball slip a card under your door.’ He took the card from Elliot and examined it. ‘We could go see McCue tomorrow.’
Elliot shook his head. ‘Don’t you ever give up?’
The grin again. ‘Only kidding. Got a tuk-tuk waiting downstairs. Ready when you are, chief.’
The tuk-tuk spluttered and bumped its way perilously through the traffic in Silom Road, taking a right into Charoen Krung Road and then sharp left down to the Oriental Hotel landing stage. The jetty was ablaze with light, crowded with all manner of people — children with mothers in black pyjamas, men in smart evening wear, monks in saffron robes — all coming and going on a variety of craft, large and small, that bobbed gently on the slow-moving waters of the Chao Phraya river. A hubbub of voices competed with the noise of the traffic on this east bank, haggling over the price of a cross-river trip on a waterborne taxi.
‘Back in a sec, chief.’ Slattery slipped off through the crowds to do his own haggling. Elliot was content to leave him to it. Slattery was an old Bangkok hand, knew his way about. Elliot let the city night wash over him. He had forgotten how many people in this sprawling river port lived on or over water, along the hundreds of klongs that ran like veins off the main artery of the river. He had read somewhere that Bangkok was sinking at the rate of half an inch a year. The incredible sinking city. In the rainy season you had to wade hip-deep through some of the streets. Perhaps, he thought, most of its people would one day be living on or over water — and some of them under it.
Slattery re-emerged from the crowd, wearing his habitual grin. ‘Alright, chief. Got us a ride and saved us a few baht.’
The ride Slattery had got them turned out to be in a sleek yellow hang yao canoe. The propeller that powered it was fixed at the end of a long driveshaft which the toothless Thai driver used as a rudder. The driver showed his gums in what was clearly meant as a friendly grin. His eyes were glazed, and he babbled something incoherent as Elliot climbed in. Elliot turned to Slattery. ‘He’s pissed!’
‘’Course he is. These guys don’t function without at least a half-bottle of Thai whisky inside them.’
Still showing his gums, the driver gunned his engine and they powered away from the landing stage, knifing through the wash from the overladen rice barges that trafficked up and down the river. They headed south, the hot breeze and cool spray in their faces, exhilarating. Under the Krungthep Bridge, then turning in a wide arc into the Dao Khanong Canal, their progress shattered city lights reflected on dark waters. Tall lamp-posts rose from the water on either side, wooden poles linked by a confusion of arcing cables carrying electricity and telephone lines. They slowed suddenly, turning again, this time into the maze of klongs, a shambles of teak houses raised on stilts overhanging the banks, linked here and there by ramshackle wooden bridges that spanned the waters.
Lights shone in most of the houses, many of the stilt-raised shops still trading. A confusion of sounds filled the night air — a babble of voices giving way to the tinny blare of Thai pop music and the Americanized jingles of a million television sets. They passed men and children bathing in the water at the foot of wooden steps leading to their homes, women perched precariously on narrow wooden terraces, peeling potatoes. Myriad small boats gave way to the hang yao, resentful faces briefly glimpsed, raised voices calling after them in the dark. ‘Tell him to slow down,’ Elliot shouted. ‘We’re going to hit someone!’
Slattery called something to the driver, who shrugged and pulled back on the throttle, slowing them down to a walking pace, and reducing the roar of the engine to little more than a throaty idle. They cruised slowly through the maze for another ten minutes or more, turning into increasingly narrow canals, thick vegetation and leaning palms crowding in on either side, choking the gaps between the houses. Slattery leaned forward and spoke to the driver, who pulled over at the foot of a short flight of wooden steps leading up to a narrow drooping teak house that stood in darkness atop its spindly legs. He cut the engine and a silence encroached with the night, broken only by the constant gentle slapping of water against stilts. A rank smell hung in the air. Rotting vegetation, human waste, woodsmoke. Something heavy thudded against the side of the canoe. Slattery leaned over to take a look, shining a small pocket torchlight into the water.
‘Dead dog,’ he said, and grinned. The decaying creature, bloated by putrid gases, drifted away. ‘We’re here.’ He jumped out on to a tiny landing stage and Elliot followed.
‘He lives here?’ Elliot asked incredulously.
‘Sure. Married a Thai girl, a bar girl. I bet she thought she was escaping from all this.’ He laughed softly, ironically. ‘And all the time it was old Billy doing the escaping. Don’t worry about the driver. He’ll wait.’
As they climbed the steps, Elliot glanced back and saw the driver taking a long pull from a murky-looking bottle. A veranda with a rickety rail ran the length of the house at the front. It creaked under their weight, and an old rocking chair tipped slowly back and forth. Mosquito nets hung loosely in open windows. Slattery rapped gently on the door. ‘Hoi, McCue!’ His voice sounded inordinately loud in the whispering silence. ‘Get out yer scratcher. Got a man here wants to see you.’
A light came on somewhere within, then after a moment the door opened and McCue appeared in a dirty white singlet and shorts, barefoot and blinking in the light. ‘Shit! What time of night’s this to come calling?’ He was a small man, no more than five-five. Sinuous, wiry arms and legs, lean-faced with a nose like a blade and a chin with a cutting edge. His eyes were dark and hostile, and his skin tanned a deep, even brown. His black hair was tousled, and had it not been for the Midwest drawl, at a glance you could have taken him for a Thai. He was younger than either of his visitors. Early thirties, Elliot guessed.
‘Hey, Billy boy, that’s no way to greet an old buddy. The chief wanted to meet you.’
McCue eyed Elliot darkly. ‘You’d better come in.’
Inside, the main room was neat and spotless, stone jars lined up against one wall, a wooden dresser with a water bowl and jug. There were no chairs, no table. McCue squatted cross-legged on the floor and indicated that they should do the same. As he sat, Elliot saw, through an open doorway, a half-naked woman slipping into a panung, a large sarong-like garment drawn up between the legs like an Indian dhoti. Beyond her, a mosquito net hung from the ceiling over a big square mattress on the floor. Inside, a baby stirred restlessly. ‘You hungry?’ McCue asked.
‘Starving,’ said Slattery.
McCue called into the back room and the woman appeared in the doorway. She pressed her palms together and bowed solemnly to the strangers. You could see she had once been very beautiful. Thai girls are considered by many to be the most beautiful in the world. But it is a beauty that fades quickly with a life that is hard, features coarsening, skin withering, so that by forty they can often look like old women. This woman — Lotus, McCue had called her — was perhaps thirty. Already well down that road. McCue spoke to her curtly in stuttering, guttural Thai. She nodded, and without a word moved off into another part of the house.
‘This is Jack Elliot,’ Slattery said.
McCue reached out a hand for a cursory handshake. ‘Elliot.’
‘How much has Mike told you?’
‘Enough to know it’s fucking madness.’
‘So why do you want to go?’
‘Because there’s a big fat pay cheque at the other end.’
Elliot glanced around him. ‘Thinking of moving upmarket?’
McCue inclined his head towards the back room. ‘This ain’t no place to bring up a kid. I’m taking him home with me.’ He spoke softly with a voice like Thai silk, his face expressionless, his eyes impenetrable.
‘Shit, Billy, you could have gone home anytime.’
‘I never wanted to before. But then, I never had a kid before.’
Elliot looked at him thoughtfully, taking in the scars on his thighs and calves. ‘What’s your track record?’
‘Three tours in Nam, sixty-nine to seventy-one.’
‘Nobody did three tours.’
‘I volunteered for the other two.’
‘With the Big Red One?’
‘First Engineer Battalion, First Cavalry Division. Sergeant, Tunnel Rats.’
The Tunnel Rats had been an eight-man elite team operating in the Iron Triangle north of Saigon, flushing VC out of the hundreds of kilometres of tunnel networks where the communist guerrillas lived and fought — a dark, subterranean existence where they had contrived sleeping chambers, food and ammunition dumps, and even makeshift hospitals. It was an extraordinary complex of tunnels, dug by hand out of the hard, laterite soil over twenty years, built on several levels to protect against flooding and gas. They were riddled with booby traps.
The VC would pop out of hidden trapdoors on the ground, catching American GIs unawares, and then vanish again into the tunnels. The soldiers sent down after them were almost invariably killed, either by booby traps, or by VC waiting with grenades or AK-47s. The twisting dark tunnels were only big enough to allow a small man to crawl on his belly. Operating here took special skills. Techniques for engaging the enemy, and a very special kind of soldier, quickly evolved. The Rats were formed in 1967.
‘You knew Batman, then?’ Elliot asked.
Sergeant Robert Batten Batman had been the most famous of the rats, and the most feared by the Viet Cong. So much so that he had made it on to their ten-most-wanted list. All the VC in the tunnels knew his name. McCue shook his head. ‘Before my time. But I heard the stories.’
‘Why were you picked?’
‘I wasn’t. I volunteered.’ A slight ironic smile hovered on his lips. ‘I loved it in the tunnels,’ he said. ‘When they told me they had a VC down there I came unglued.’ The most dangerous moment for the Rat, when he was most exposed, was when he was lowered into the hole. Often a VC would be waiting for him at the bottom with a poisoned bamboo punji stake, or a grenade, or he would just cut the Rat in two with a burst of automatic fire. It was one of those moments that had finally got to McCue, a split second when he lost his nerve and just couldn’t do it any more. Just six weeks earlier he had almost been killed in a tunnel. He remembered the cold horror of the moment. They knew there was a VC somewhere up ahead in the dark. McCue had inched his way forward, his flashlight held out to one side in his left hand, his gun in the other. A second Rat followed about five metres back — the distance at which a grenade would not be lethal.
As they came to a bend, McCue had reached round and fired three shots into the blackness. Nothing. So he had moved on. The tunnel straightened out and came to a dead end. A slight earth-fall betrayed the presence of an overhead trapdoor. As he reached it, sweat running in clear rivulets down his blackened face, the trapdoor slid into place. The VC was right above him. His mouth dry, he had raised his pistol, ready to fire, and pushed the trapdoor up. Something fell, almost into his lap. ‘Grenade!’ he screamed, and started scrambling back along the tunnel. The explosion ruptured one of his ear drums, and his legs were peppered with grenade fragments. The second Rat had dragged the bleeding and half-conscious McCue back along the tunnel. It had taken nearly an hour to get him to the surface.
The smell of cooking came to them from the back of the house. Outside, the cicadas kept up an incessant chorus and the murky waters of the klong lapped constantly at the stilts. Slattery passed round cigarettes and the three men sat smoking in silence for some minutes. At length McCue looked at Elliot and broke the silence. ‘You were responsible for the Aden massacre.’
Slattery glanced at Elliot anxiously, but the Englishman was impassive. ‘It’s what they said at the court martial.’ He stared back at McCue, unblinking.
‘Apart from that, I don’t know anything about you,’ McCue said.
‘No one does, Billy boy, no one does,’ Slattery said cheerfully. ‘But he’s the chief. And take my word for it, a handy man in a scrap.’
McCue’s eyes never left Elliot. ‘What’s your experience in south-east Asia?’
‘Nam.’ McCue raised an eyebrow, and Elliot answered the unasked question. ‘Freelance.’
A flicker of distaste crossed McCue’s face. ‘A headhunter.’
‘I only counted them.’ It wasn’t a defence. Just a statement of fact. In the early days in Nam, some of the mercenaries had been paid by the head. Literally. Elliot had not been squeamish about it. Just practical. Heads were bloody and cumbersome. He knew McCue was weighing him up, and he liked that. Soldiers who thought before they acted stood a better chance of survival. He had already decided that McCue was in.
McCue said, ‘When do we go?’
And Elliot knew that he, too, had passed muster. ‘Ten days. My fixer in the UK has set us up a contact here in Bangkok. He’ll provide arms, kit and supplies. We’ll make contact tomorrow. He’ll also provide passes to get us into selected camps along the border. I want to do a recce, talk to some of the refugees. And we’ll need a guide. Someone to get us across the border. Then we’ll be on our own. Initial planning meeting in a week.’
Lotus brought in half a dozen bowls of steaming food on a tray and laid it on the floor beside them. With a careful, elegant precision, she knelt down and placed each of the bowls on the floor in the centre of the small circle of men. McCue described each dish. ‘Kaeng jeud, soup with vegetables and pork. Khao phat muu, fried rice with shrimp. Phat siyu, noodles and soy sauce. Plaa priaw waan, sweet and sour fish. Phat phak lai yang, stir-fried vegetables. Yam neua, hot and sour grilled beef salad.’
‘Jesus, that’s some spread, Billy. Tell the little lady it’s much appreciated.’
She nodded, unsmiling. ‘Thank you.’ She passed them each a bowl and chopsticks.
‘Tuck in, chief. Thailand’s finest. All cooked in lovely klong water, that right, Billy?’ McCue inclined his head in acknowledgement. ‘Wash, shit and cook in the stuff.’ Slattery glanced at Elliot. ‘But don’t worry, chief, suck it and see. You’ve had your cholera booster, ain’t ya?’
On the way back Elliot was silent. The hot air battered against his face as their driver, now glazed and unreachable, drove their hang yao through the myriad waterways with a reckless disregard for the safety of anyone. Slattery hung on to the side of the boat grinning maniacally, eyes on fire. ‘Fantastic, chief! Absolutely fantastic!’ They had consumed enough Mekong, a distilled rice concoction, to leave them with as much disregard for their safety as their driver.
Elliot was miles away. McCue’s total commitment to his child had touched a raw nerve. However little he cared for himself, or even his wife, he was prepared to die to provide the chance of a better future for his son. Elliot had a picture in his head that wouldn’t go away. Of a young woman in a churchyard, all in black, lifting her veil and looking at him without recognition. Somehow that had been more painful than the years of denial. He had known her at once, felt he would have known her anywhere. And he had provided for her, hadn’t he? After a fashion? He shook his head. It was the Mekong talking, not his conscience. He had no conscience, or if he had it had never offered him guidance, only pain, somewhere deep inside, buried away from public gaze.
‘I could do with a real drink,’ Slattery shouted above the roar of the engine.
Elliot looked at him. ‘What age do you reckon McCue is?’
Slattery frowned. ‘I dunno. About thirty? Why?’
Elliot shrugged. ‘Doesn’t matter.’
‘So what about that drink?’
‘Why not.’ Elliot felt like getting drunk.
Chapter Ten
Lisa opened a small, white-painted wooden gate and started down the path through the trees towards the house. It was a mock Tudor building, white with black-painted cross-beams and latticed windows. The garden was extensive and well kept, a path leading round the side to a large lawn at the back which sloped down towards the river’s edge. The weather had changed overnight. It had been bitterly cold, threatening snow for Christmas. But today it was unseasonably mild, an almost springlike warmth in the sun that slipped out periodically from behind the scudding white clouds that raced across the winter sky.
She was apprehensive, but the passing days had blunted hope and she expected nothing. She had returned several times to the mews house, but always there had been no one there. If this proved another dead end, she had resolved to put it all behind her, return to college after the holidays and try to build a new life for herself. She would tell herself that, after all, her father really was dead as her mother had always told her. In time she might even grow to believe it. She would probably marry David, raise children and lead a normal life. Normal! Whatever that was.
She knocked on the door and waited, praying that at least someone would answer, even if only to tell her she had the wrong address. Not knowing was the worst. The sun slipped behind a cloud and a shadow fell over her like fading hope. She knocked again and was about to turn away when the door opened abruptly. A grey-haired man in a green pullover, baggy trousers and tennis shoes peered out at her. She hesitated, not quite sure now what to say. ‘Yes?’ the man asked.
‘Sergeant Samuel Blair?’ she stammered, aware of the colour rising on her cheeks. He frowned, eyeing her suspiciously.
‘Who wants to know?’
‘I’m Lisa Elliot,’ she said.
Blair was at a loss for words. He had figured her for some young reporter trying to dig up an old story. It happened from time to time. But he saw now that she was too young, her face flushed with uncertainty.
‘You’d better come in,’ he said at length.
He led her through to the sun lounge and indicated the chair where her father had sat only a few days before. ‘Tea? Coffee?’ She shook her head. He sat on the edge of his leather armchair opposite her, leaning forward, hands clasped between his legs. He stared at them for a moment. Big rough hands, speckles of age like large freckles spattering the back of them. ‘So how can I help you?’
‘I’m looking for my father.’ She was hesitant. Not sure how much she should tell him. But there was something warm in his eyes that drew her on. ‘I have an address in a Chelsea mews. I know he did live there, but it seems to be empty now.’
Blair nodded, reluctant to commit himself to anything yet. He examined her face. Pretty. And he thought he saw something of her father in her. Was it the blue of her eyes? Maybe something in the set of the mouth, or the line of the jaw? ‘How did you find me?’
‘Luck really,’ she said. ‘And a journalist’s training.’ He allowed himself an ironic smile. He hadn’t been so wrong, after all. She added, ‘I went through all the names of those convicted at the court martial and looked in the telephone book. Yours was the only one listed. But, even then, I couldn’t be sure it was the same Samuel Blair.’
Blair made a mental note to change his number and go ex-directory. ‘I understood you’d been told Jack was dead.’
‘Jack? Is that what you call him?’ It was odd hearing him referred to by name by someone who knew him. It made him more real. ‘I thought it was John.’
Blair shrugged. ‘He’s always been Jack to me. And you haven’t answered my question.’
‘I didn’t know you’d asked me one.’ She caught his look. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said, ‘I was told he was dead. Then this man turned up at the funeral...’
Blair was taken aback. ‘He was at the funeral!’
Lisa nodded. ‘I didn’t know who he was, of course. But then I found all the newspaper cuttings in the attic, and some old photographs. My mother had shut them away.’
He saw a large tear gather itself on the brim of her eye before it rolled down her cheek.
‘All those years he was alive, sending money. And I grew up without a father. And then I find out he was a... a murderer!’ She looked at him, daring him to contradict her, her eyes blurred and wet. ‘And you were, too.’
Blair was embarrassed by her tears, hurt by her words, sharing the pain of them. ‘You mustn’t be too hard on him, Lisa.’
And immediately she punished the inadequacy of the only words he had been able to find in response. ‘Why not?’ Her eyes blazed at him. ‘Do you think it wasn’t hard on me? All the other kids had dads. Dads who took them skating, picked them up from dancing, read them stories.’
‘And all those dads had little girls to pick up from dancing, to read stories to. It goes both ways, Lisa.’
‘Maybe. But whose fault was that? Mine?’ All the resentment that had been growing inside spilled out in bitter words. Now she knew why she wanted to find her father so badly. She wanted someone to blame. Blair reached across and took her hand. Such a small hand in his. There was compassion in his eyes. Understanding. And Lisa wondered how it was possible that this man, too, was responsible for killing all those women and children.
‘I think you could do with some air,’ he said. A wry smile. ‘I think I could, too.’
Lisa said, ‘Not having a father, not knowing anything about him, I invented him for myself, made up stories about him.’ She felt better for the fresh air, strangely comfortable with this man, able to talk to him as she had never talked to anyone before. They followed a path through the trees by the water’s edge, scuffing through the dead leaves that still lay thick and rotting on the ground.
‘He was very handsome and kind, and brave, and he died in some heroic gesture trying to save the lives of his men. It had broken my mother’s heart and it still hurt her deeply even to talk about him, so she never did. It’s what I told my friends. There was a time, I think, I actually believed it myself. But somewhere, deep down, I suppose I always knew it wasn’t true. And as I got older I started to hate him, blame him for dying and leaving us. Just as I blame my mother now for leaving me to face everything on my own. Not very rational. How can you blame someone for dying?’
‘It’s quite common when someone close to you dies,’ Blair said. ‘You feel let down, betrayed.’
Lisa glanced at him, sensing that he wasn’t generalizing, that he was speaking from personal experience. But she didn’t ask. ‘I was never close to my mother, though,’ she said. ‘I didn’t love her, and I’m sure she didn’t love me. Sometimes I even felt that she resented me. Maybe she did. Maybe all I was to her was a constant reminder of my father.’ She shook her head. ‘But if that was true, why did she go to such lengths to protect me from the truth? From ever knowing anything about him?’
‘Perhaps,’ said Blair, ‘she wasn’t so much protecting you as punishing him.’
Lisa looked at him, startled. But he refused to meet her gaze. Of course! It would fit with her mother’s twisted logic. The thought had a profoundly depressing effect on her.
‘But that’s probably oversimplifying it,’ Blair added lamely and too late.
They came to a bench overlooking the river and sat down, watching the slow movement of the water in silence for some time. Finally she asked the question that had been consuming her for days. ‘What’s he like, my father?’
Blair shrugged. ‘That’s like asking how long is a piece of string.’
‘But you know him — or did.’
The Scot shook his head. ‘Jack’s not a man you ever know. Not really. Though I suppose I’m the closest thing he’s got to a friend. But even then, I don’t know him. He’s a complex character. If you’re asking if I like him the answer is yes. Very much. I admire him and respect him, but I also like him.’
‘How can you like someone you don’t know?’ And immediately she recognized the paradox of her question. She didn’t know the man she had asked it of, but she knew she liked him.
‘Jack never confided in me,’ Blair said. ‘At least, not anything personal, never what was really in his heart. But there was always a rapport between us. Sometimes it’s the things left unsaid that say the most. He never spoke of your mother, or of you, but I knew he was hurting. And he still carries the scars of that hurt, though you can’t see them like you can the scar on his face.
‘When they sent him to prison he asked me if I would make sure that you were both provided for — until he could pay me back.’
‘It was you that paid the money into my mother’s account?’
He nodded. ‘And, of course, he did pay me back. It wasn’t easy for him at first, when he got out. He went to Vietnam for a spell and fought for the Diem regime. And then in the Seventies to Africa. Rhodesia, Angola.’
‘A mercenary?’ Lisa could not hide her distaste for the word.
Blair smiled wryly. ‘A soldier of fortune,’ he said. ‘After all, it was all he knew, soldiering. It was what he was trained for, and he was very good at it. If it hadn’t been for Aden...’
‘Why did you do it?’ Lisa broke in, accusation again in her voice. ‘How could you shoot all those people in cold blood like that?’
Blair got up and walked a few paces towards the river’s edge. hands in his pockets, remembering how it had been. The heat. That scorching, dusty, white heat. The casualties, on both sides, the dead and the dying, men with horrific injuries. Betrayal and counter-betrayal. Never knowing who to trust. And the flies. Always those damned flies, crawling into every gaping wound, getting in your mouth, your eyes. He breathed deeply, drawing the chill clean English air into his lungs. ‘Whatever it was, it wasn’t in cold blood,’ he said. ‘We were all of us tired and scared. We’d been drawn into an ambush at a town on the edge of the southern desert. False information. They’d sucked us in and were cutting us to pieces. We all thought we were going to die.
‘We’d been coming under heavy fire from a large building in the middle of town. Jack reckoned if we could take and hold that building we could secure our position, at least for a while. We lobbed a couple of grenades through the ground-floor windows and moved in under covering fire. That’s when the white flag appeared. Not a flag, really. A piece of dirty white cloth in one of the windows. But, Jesus, if we’d stopped then we’d have been sitting ducks. How were we to know that they’d already withdrawn, that all that was left was a bunch of women and children?
‘Jack ordered us to keep going, ignore the flag, and he was right. I’d have done the same. We all would. But he was the officer, he gave the order, he took the fall.’ He paused, fists clenched in his pockets, eyes tight shut trying to black out the horror of it. Then he opened them wide and saw it as clearly as he had every night in the dreams that had haunted him all the years since.
‘We went in, guns blazing, just like in the movies. Only when the dust and the smoke cleared we were looking at the bodies of women and kids, dead, dying, bleeding.’ He turned to face her, but found that he couldn’t meet her gaze and his eyes flickered away.
‘It didn’t read like that in the newspaper reports of the court martial,’ she said.
‘No — but, then, courts only deal with facts. The truth — well, the truth is something else.’
‘Truth is subjective.’
He looked at her, surprised by the insight in one so young. But her eyes carried no condemnation, only pity. And, perhaps, he thought, that was worse. ‘It was all a long time ago,’ he said. ‘I suppose I really don’t know what the truth is any more. All I know is the truth I can live with. And, God knows, that’s hard enough, lass.’
They walked back to the house in silence. ‘Would you like to stay for tea?’ he asked when they got in.
‘No, I must go.’ She turned at the door. ‘Where is he, Mr Blair?’
Blair hesitated. There was a good chance Elliot would never come out of Cambodia alive. Then, ‘Thailand,’ he said.
He sat for a long time in the dying day after she’d gone, full of doubts. The room was sunk in a deep gloom when he finally reached for the phone. He listened to Elliot’s voice on the other end, thin and unreal on the tape of his answering machine. After the tone Blair said, ‘If she hasn’t found you before you get this message, Jack, your daughter knows you’re alive and she’s looking for you.’
And the machine was primed.
Chapter Eleven
Tuk Than had a villa on Sukhumvit Road. It was an impressive house built in the French colonial style, anonymous and cool behind shuttered windows. The brief chill of early morning had given way to the fierce south-east Asian sun which was rising high now above the Bangkok skyline, smeared by a haze of heat and humidity. Slattery’s face was red and beaded with sweat. He tugged uncomfortably at his collar and loosened his tie. ‘Jeez, chief, did we have to get all togged up for this?’
‘It’s expected,’ was all Elliot said, and Slattery wondered how he managed to look so cool in his dark suit.
A demure young Thai girl in yellow tunic and long silk skirt bowed and led them through the delicious cool of the house, where ceiling fans turned lazily in darkened rooms. Out through French windows into the heat once more. Elliot and Slattery screwed their eyes against the glare. The large walled garden was lush and green, still dripping after its early morning sprinkling. A white table and four chairs were set in the shade of a tall, broad-leafed tree at one end of a lawn like billiard baize. Tuk was taking breakfast at the table, short black hair brushed stiffly back from his brown face. He wore an immaculately pressed white shirt and pale slacks. Everything about him — hair, hands, clothes, his smile and his English — was as neatly manicured as his lawn.
‘Good morning, gentlemen.’ He made no attempt to rise, but waved expansively towards the empty chairs. ‘Won’t you join me? I’m having a little late breakfast.’
‘Thank you, we’ve already eaten,’ Elliot said. He and Slattery sat down.
‘Mr Elliot, I take it,’ Tuk said.
‘That’s right.’
‘And...’ Tuk’s eyes flickered towards the sweating Slattery.
‘Slattery,’ Elliot said. Slattery nodded, uncomfortable and untidy in his crumpled, ill-fitting white suit.
‘So...’ Tuk clasped his hands and beamed at them. ‘Our friend in London has told me of your requirements, and of course I can supply — at a price.’
‘Naturally.’ Elliot was already wary of him. He was too squeaky clean, too ostentatiously wealthy — calculating and obsequious. His aftershave, liberally applied to his freshly shaved cheeks, was too expensive and carried the reek of corruption. His hands, Elliot noticed, were like a woman’s. He was small and slim, possibly in his early forties. Wariness was turning to distrust.
‘I have arranged passes allowing you access to the Mak Moun refugee camp north of Aranyaprathet on the Cambodian border. I can take you down tomorrow. There I can also put you in touch with a man who will take you safely across the border.’ He smiled. ‘We can discuss terms later, but first...’ He raised an arm and snapped his fingers. The girl who had brought them in appeared at the French windows and he uttered some clipped instruction. ‘I insist that you join me in a drink.’
‘I won’t say no to that,’ Slattery grinned.
The girl brought three amber-coloured drinks in tall glasses, ice ringing coolly against the glass. ‘A Mekong-based cocktail, mixed with various fruit juices,’ Tuk said. Slattery eyed the girl as she retreated towards the house. Tuk followed his eyes and smiled. He inclined his head and raised his glass. ‘Here’s to your success.’ They sipped the bitter-sweet cocktail and Tuk dabbed his brow with a small white handkerchief. ‘You realize, of course, that the Thai authorities would not approve of your little venture into Democratic Kampuchea.’
‘I didn’t think your people were on the best of terms with Pol Pot and his pals,’ Slattery said.
‘They are not, Mr Slattery, but they wish to avoid a war at all costs. There is a large army presence along the border. It is well patrolled. Naturally, if the police or the army were to discover your intentions you would most certainly be arrested. They would not like to provoke an incident with the Khmer Rouge. The risk, therefore, to myself in supplying you is increased.’
‘Like the price, no doubt.’
Tuk smiled at the irony in Elliot’s voice. ‘It goes without saying. The greater the risk, the greater the recompense. I imagine you would not be undertaking this — adventure — if the rewards were not very great.’
‘A calculated risk,’ Elliot conceded.
‘And your calculations will doubtless include the knowledge that the area east of the north-west sector is thick with Khmer Rouge units.’
‘It’s our only possible crossing point,’ Elliot said. ‘I’ve looked at all the other possibilities. There’s the Dangrek mountains to the north, and the Phnom Malai mountain range, thickly wooded as I understand it, to the south.’
‘Which is precisely why there is such a heavy concentration of troops in the north-west. It is from there that any Cambodian invasion of Thailand will come. Conversely, it is this area that the Khmers see the need to defend against any imagined threat from the west. And, of course, it is through this area that most of the refugees have come. The forests are mined and booby-trapped, and well patrolled by the Khmer Rouge.’
Elliot had done his homework. He already knew much of what Tuk was telling them. ‘I’m banking on a decreased presence because of the continuing border confrontations with the Vietnamese in the south,’ he said.
‘Then you are banking on a fantasy,’ Tuk replied. ‘You must realize, Mr Elliot, that the regime of Pol Pot is neither rational nor sane. I myself heard the famous broadcast from Radio Phnom Penh last year, which claimed that one Kampuchean soldier was capable of killing thirty Vietnamese, and that, therefore, only two million Kampuchean troops would be required to wipe out the entire population of Vietnam.’ There was contempt in his smile. ‘They are sacrificing thousands of yotheas — child soldiers — in the border war with Vietnam. Children of ten and twelve years, Mr Elliot. And if they refuse to fight they are shot in the back by their own people. As I understand it, Phnom Penh has committed only thirty to forty thousand troops in the south, while the Vietnamese have massed around a hundred and twenty thousand along the border.’
Slattery glanced at Elliot. ‘Tougher than you thought, then, chief?’
Elliot seemed unfazed. ‘I need more first-hand intelligence on the ground we’ll be covering. It makes it all the more important for us to talk to refugees who have recently come through the north-west sector.’
There was hardly a breath of air in the sheltered silence of Tuk’s garden. The late morning heat was intense, the humidity rising. Slattery finished his drink with regret and felt the now familiar tightening across his chest, a dull pain growing acidly from somewhere deep inside his solar plexus. His concentration wandered as Tuk sat back languidly in his chair, dabbing his forehead, clearly in a mood to talk. ‘What do you know of Democratic Kampuchea, Mr Elliot?’ he said.
‘Only what I’ve read in the newspapers,’ Elliot said. ‘There isn’t much information coming out of the country.’
‘Enough to know that there has been genocide on a massive scale.’ Tuk sipped at his drink. ‘Stone-Age communism, the Vietnamese call it. Even the Chinese, who have backed Pol Pot from the start, are embarrassed by what has been happening since he took power. The Khmer Rouge are giving communism a bad name. They have been trying to build what they see as a classless society, based on an agrarian economy. They have emptied the cities, wiped out their intelligentsia. Anyone who could read or write, or speak another language. If you wore glasses you were shot as an intellectual — even if you had been no more than a simple fisherman. They are fanatical, almost beyond belief. Even Stalin would have been shocked.’
He leaned back reflectively, enjoying what he knew, savouring it from the security of his villa in Sukhumvit Road, passing it on to lesser mortals with a careless generosity.
‘The strange thing is that it is a peculiarly Cambodian phenomenon. These are Cambodians destroying fellow Cambodians. Incestuous genocide. You must speak to a Cambodian friend of mind about it.’ He glanced at his gold wristwatch. ‘If you care to have another drink while you wait, she will be here very shortly.’
‘Wouldn’t do no harm, chief,’ Slattery said eagerly.
Elliot shrugged. ‘We’ve nothing better to do.’
The drinks came and Tuk spoke for some time of Thailand, of the Prime Minister, General Kriangsak Chamanan, a moderate military figure, he said, who had cut back Thai support for the Khmer Serei — the Free Khmer — guerrillas who were based along the border and dedicated to the downfall of the Khmer Rouge. Elliot seemed to Slattery to be listening with interest, but Slattery himself had no interest in any of it. He looked around the garden, reflecting on how good life could have been. Not that he had been disappointed by his forty-odd years. He had enjoyed most of them, living often close to death, something that always somehow heightened the pleasure of life itself. How could you really know life, he thought, until you had faced death? But he had never had money. Not real money. How differently he might have felt about life, and death, if he had. But, then, he thought wryly, even money can’t save you from the Big C.
It was Slattery, lost in his thoughts, who saw her first. Radiant, all in white, stepping through the French windows. He blinked in case he was dreaming. She was, he thought, the most beautiful woman he had ever seen. She wore a calf-length, white, cotton dress, cross-cut in a deep V over her small breasts and tied loosely at the waist by a red cord. Silken black hair cascaded over her shoulders, so black it was almost blue as it caught the glare of the sun. Her skin was the colour of teak, her eyes a deep, almost luminescent brown. There was just a touch of rouge on her fine high cheekbones, a hint of blue on the lids of her eyes, the merest trace of red on her full, wide lips. She moved with a slow assured elegance across the lawn and he realized that she was tall, perhaps five-six, and not of pure Asian blood. Tuk rose as she approached, and Elliot turned his head to see her for the first time. And he knew from that first moment that she was something very special.
‘My dear,’ Tuk said. He stood and made a little bow. She kissed him on each cheek in the French manner and took his hands in hers.
‘Than. You are well, I hope?’ she said with an accent that owed more to French than Cambodian.
Tuk smiled with genuine affection. ‘Of course,’ he said. ‘But I have no need to ask it of you. You are radiant, as always.’
She inclined her head in acknowledgement with the assurance of one accustomed to admiration. Slattery saw now that she was older than she appeared. Tiny lines around the eyes and the mouth, a slight loosening of the skin at her neck. She looked thirty, although she could easily have been forty, or even more. But age enhanced rather than diminished her beauty. She was flawed only by her lack of innocence. A look, knowing and calculated, in her eyes. She turned, ignoring Slattery, and looked directly at Elliot with an unwavering gaze of naked interest. ‘Are you not going to introduce us, Than?’
‘But, of course. La Mère Grace, Mr Elliot. A business associate from England.’
‘Oh? And what kind of business are you in, Mr Elliot?’
‘I make war,’ Elliot said.
She offered him a cool hand, small and perfect, which caressed his for the briefest of moments. Then she looked at Slattery. Tuk said, ‘And Mr Slattery.’
‘And do you make war also, Mr Slattery?’ she asked.
‘Only when I get paid.’ Slattery grinned and added, ‘But I prefer making love.’
She raised an elegant eyebrow. ‘Then we have much in common. I, too, prefer to make love. But only when paid.’ Her eyes flickered back to Elliot.
Tuk watched with amusement. ‘Grace runs the best brothel in Bangkok,’ he said. ‘Please, do sit.’ They all sat and Tuk called for another drink.
‘Brothel is not a word I care to use,’ La Mère Grace said. ‘It has... connotations. My girls entertain only the most discerning of clients. I have other establishments to cater for the more basic clientele.’ She looked again at Slattery. ‘We can cater for almost every taste.’ Slattery shifted uncomfortably under her gaze, feeling like a book that had just been read and discarded.
Tuk offered her a cigarette and lit it, then lit one for himself. He did not extend the offer to Elliot or Slattery. She took tiny puffs, exhaling the smoke through pursed lips.
‘La Mère Grace ran the most celebrated house in Phnom Penh until the early Seventies.’ Tuk leaned back and ran a hand through his hair. ‘She only just escaped the country before the Khmer Rouge took over. Unfortunately she was unable to bring her girls with her.’
‘I very much fear they were killed by the communists,’ she said with no apparent trace of regret. ‘I have had to find and train new girls. Thai girls.’
‘I was telling Mr Elliot,’ Tuk said, ‘that he must speak to you of Cambodia. He and Mr Slattery intend visiting it in the not too distant future.’
A look of surprise flickered momentarily in her eyes, but she knew better than to ask. ‘Of course,’ she said. ‘If I can be of any assistance.’
Tuk stood up. ‘And now, gentlemen, I have other business to attend to. At which hotel are you staying?’
Elliot rose. ‘The Narai.’
‘Then I shall pick you up this evening at seven and take you to my warehouse to examine the merchandise. And we can also make arrangements for our trip tomorrow.’
His dismissal was brief and pointed. Slattery raised himself to his feet and grinned at La Mère Grace. ‘Pleased to have met you, ma’am.’
She smiled perfunctorily and held out a card to Elliot. ‘Call on me tomorrow night. Both of you. I’ll expect you at nine.’
She watched them walk across the lawn towards the house. ‘He doesn’t say much,’ she said. ‘The dark one.’
Tuk rubbed his chin thoughtfully. ‘It is often the quiet ones who are the most dangerous. We would, each of us, do well not to underestimate him.’
Chapter Twelve
David poured the last of the wine into their glasses. Lisa had drunk most of the bottle, since he was driving. Before the meal she had gone through three gins and tonic. He wasn’t sure now whether she meant to be vague or whether it was the drink. It was she who had called and suggested they go out for a meal — the first time she’d called him in days. But she had been strangely formal and uncommunicative, and done nothing to assuage his growing exasperation with her. He was beginning to lose patience.
She was toying absently with her glass, staring vacantly at some spot on the table. It was as though he wasn’t there. He felt an anger welling in him. He did appreciate that she was going through an emotional crisis — the death of her mother, the discovery that her father was alive. But she was refusing to share it with him, to let him in, to let him help. Now he was feeling used. Why had she asked him to take her out for a meal, and then sat through it silent and morose, refusing to give a direct answer to any of his questions? He restrained an impulse to snap at her, and asked with a patience that he did not feel, ‘Why won’t he see you?’
She lifted her head and seemed surprised. ‘Oh, it’s not that he won’t see me. He can’t.’
‘Why not?’
‘Because he — he’s out of the country. He doesn’t even know I know he’s alive.’
‘So how do you know he’s out of the country?’
She sighed. She hadn’t wanted to go into it all. She could have told him over the phone what she was going to do, but felt she at least owed him an explanation in person. But faced with him like this, she wasn’t finding it easy. ‘It’s a long story,’ she said.
‘I’ve got time.’
She hesitated, then reached a decision, drained her glass and said, ‘Alright, I’ll tell you. But take me home first.’ She didn’t want a row in the restaurant.
He bit back a retort and signalled the waiter that he wanted the bill.
They drove back to the house in silence. He glanced at her once or twice, but she was still miles away. The house was cold and dark when they got in, and she lit the gas fire in the living room, drawing the curtains and turning on a small table lamp. ‘You want a drink?’ she asked.
‘I’m driving.’
She nodded and poured herself a large gin and tonic.
He said, ‘Don’t you think you’ve had enough already?’
‘No,’ she replied simply. ‘If I want to get pissed I’ll get pissed.’ She took her glass, almost defiantly, and squatted on the rug in front of the fire. He sat in her mother’s armchair and thought how childish she was being. What had he ever seen in her? She was a good-looking girl, intelligent, brimming with potential. But if he had once believed it was a potential he could shape, he was already beginning to entertain doubts. It wasn’t as though they even had any kind of sexual relationship. She’d always been strange about that, as if sex frightened her. And, like most things about her, he didn’t begin to understand because she would never tell him. Anything. She was like a book with an exotic title that excited the interest. But she had never allowed him to open it.
‘So,’ he said. ‘You were going to tell me.’
She looked at him and wondered why she had felt she owed him anything. She didn’t love him. Oh, she had thought so at first. He was so good-looking. Thick red hair swept back from a fine face. A voice that came from his boots. He looked as though he should have led a Bohemian existence in the Paris of the nineteen-twenties. And he had seemed so caring and sincere at first, with all his deeply held views on social justice. Social justice! she thought with irony. The only social justice he was interested in was his own. He was so possessive about everything: his job, his future, his life. And she was just another of his possessions. The only reason, it occurred to her, that he hadn’t already given up on her was because he would have counted it a failure. His failure. And David couldn’t bear to fail at anything. And, yet, in spite of it all, there was something about him she still liked. She shied away from the idea that it was the sense of safety she felt with him. She wanted to believe it was more than that.
‘Well, are you going to tell me or aren’t you?’ he asked. She sipped her gin then took a deep breath and told him. Everything. The mews house in Chelsea where there was never any reply, the searches through the phone book, the visit to the Sergeant’s house, everything that he had told her, everything she had told him. David listened gravely, just letting her talk. It occurred to him that it would make a good feature for one of the Sunday papers, then he was shocked that he had even thought of it and realized how little he really cared. It worried him, sometimes, how little he felt for other people, how little their problems touched him. Life was all a performance, the way you were expected to behave. And hurt was only what you felt, never what the other person felt. He decided to be sympathetic.
He sat down on the floor beside her, slipping an arm around her waist, squeezing her gently, letting her rest her head on his shoulder. He ran his hand back through her hair, then traced the line of her nose, lips and chin lightly with his fingers. The smell of her perfume, the warmth of her closeness, began a stirring in his loins and quickened his heart. What was it about her that made him want her so much? ‘Poor Lisa,’ he said. ‘I’m sorry. You must have thought me very unsympathetic.’ For the first time he felt he was making progress. That she was on the point of opening up the book to him at last. And he relaxed as he felt her respond to his touch.
Lisa closed her eyes and felt the drink spinning her head. She should have known David would understand. But she’d been frightened to give him the chance. He’d been so antagonistic when she had gone to see the lawyer.
Now, just having told him felt good. Someone else to share the weight of it all. She felt his lips on her neck, gently brushing her skin. His breath sent a shiver down her back. He bit her softly and she felt the first stirrings of arousal. She turned her head towards him and his lips found hers, barely touching. He kissed her — a light, loving kiss. Then again. This time more fiercely. She felt herself responding, felt his hand slip under her top and push up her bra, felt it warm on her breast. A thrill ran through her, leaving her weak. She pushed herself against him and they slipped over gently on to the floor, the softness of the rug beneath them, the warmth of the fire on their skin. His mouth was everywhere. Her lips, her neck. Her bra had come away, her top pushed up. She heard herself moan, a distant voice that belonged to someone else. She felt him hard against her leg. She opened her eyes and saw him looking down at her, the strangest look on his face, eyes burning with a passion so violent that suddenly it frightened her. She went cold.
‘No,’ she said. It wasn’t right. He didn’t own her, she didn’t love him. ‘No,’ she said again. ‘No, David.’ And she tried to push him away. He resisted, pressing down on her hard.
‘It’s alright, Lisa. It’ll be alright.’
But she knew it wouldn’t. ‘No!’ And with a great effort she pulled herself away from under him, sitting up fastening her bra and pulling down her top. He looked at her, mouth tight, eyes filled with anger.
‘What the fuck’s wrong with you!’ he shouted.
‘There’s nothing wrong with me,’ she said, with all the control she could muster. But her voice was trembling. ‘I think you’d better go.’
‘I think I had.’ He got to his feet and looked at her with patent hostility, running his hands back through his hair as if trying to smooth his ruffled pride. ‘Don’t expect me to call.’
‘I won’t,’ she said to his back as he turned towards the door. ‘And even if you did I wouldn’t be here.’
He stopped, frowning. ‘What do you mean?’
‘I’ve already applied for my passport,’ she said. ‘I’m leaving early next week.’
‘For where?’ He glared at her in consternation.
‘Bangkok,’ she said. ‘To find my father.’
Chapter Thirteen
The long dusty drive south-west to Aranyaprathet was tedious. The unbroken flatness of the paddy fields stretching away on either side of a long straight road that sat up on an embankment rising a metre above the surrounding countryside. The air conditioning in Tuk’s car made it difficult to believe it was hot out there — crucifyingly hot under the December sun.
‘In the rainy season,’ Tuk said brightly, ‘this road is impassable, under almost a metre of water.’
Elliot, Slattery and McCue sat in the back, silenced by the monotony of the drive, while Tuk sat in the front beside his driver, chatting animatedly.
Mak Moun camp, he told them, was effectively controlled by a man called Van Saren, a captain in the army of Lon Nol before the Khmer Rouge victory. Tuk turned in his seat and smiled. ‘Well, so he says. He might have been a lieutenant, but even that’s doubtful. He calls himself Marshal and claims to be the most honourable of the Khmer Serei. It is he who will arrange your border crossing.’ He laughed. ‘Actually, he smuggles teak and artefacts out of Cambodia for me. He’s a nice man. You’ll like him.’ He laughed again, and Elliot felt there was something unpleasant in the laugh.
The previous night Tuk had taken the three of them to Bangkok’s dockland, to a lock-up among a jumble of deserted warehouses. There, under the watchful eyes of armed guards, they had selected weapons and equipment from what was virtually an arsenal. The Colt Commando variation of the M16 automatic rifle, M26 anti-personnel hand grenades, Colt.45 automatic pistols. McCue had picked out a long, lethal hunting knife that hung from a belted sheath that strapped high up round the shoulder. He handled it with a kind of reverence and had to be persuaded to take an automatic rifle. ‘Never carried one in the tunnels,’ he said. ‘Too goddam clumsy!’
They were to travel light, but Elliot insisted that Slattery pack a shortwave radio-receiver. Tuk had promised to have everything delivered to a pick-up point near the border once it had been decided exactly where they were to make their crossing. And now that he had been paid, he was full of false bonhomie. Not one of the men in the back of the car trusted him.
Aranyaprathet had been transformed from a sleepy, forgotten little border town into a thriving and expanding mini-metropolis by the influx of refugees, and by the medical and relief agencies that had moved in to meet their needs. The town was thick with foreigners and commerce and traffic of all kinds. Bars and shops and clubs had sprung up everywhere, as they had in the North American goldrush boom towns. Only here the gold was flesh, and the currency human misery. There was a large Thai army presence and a growing administration complex, the fruits of a burgeoning bureaucracy, to control the comings and goings of all manner of people — refugees, journalists, troops, traders, prostitutes, and large numbers of workers from the international relief agencies. Trucks lumbered in from Bangkok throughout the day, bringing the decadent goods of an alien Western culture to feed the black-market economy.
‘The trucks only travel by day,’ Tuk said. ‘The road is controlled by bandits after dusk. Cars and trucks are attacked and robbed, and the drivers often killed. The army surrenders control after the sun goes down.’
They spent a hot sticky hour below a broken ceiling fan in a room filled with the human flotsam of war, while Tuk spoke long and heatedly with recalcitrant Thai officials. Finally Tuk and the officials disappeared into another room. When they came out again, ten minutes later, Tuk was smiling broadly. ‘All fixed,’ he said. ‘We can go now.’ Vacant eyes watched them leave.
Outside the heat of the sun seared the skin and the senses, and it was a merciful relief to slip back into the air-conditioned comfort of Tuk’s car.
Mak Moun came as a shock, even after the poverty and corruption of Bangkok and Aranyaprathet. This largest of the Cambodian encampments on the border was little better than a rural slum. The place was black with flies, a huge depressing sprawl of small huts crammed together, refuse piled in stinking heaps, broken bottles and empty cans, decaying scraps of food scraped from meagre plates, a flyblown chicken carcass. Men and women and children squatting to defecate in a nearly dried-up stream running through the camp were almost obscured by the flies. The stench of human excrement was choking. Young Thai soldiers carrying rifles or automatic weapons wandered arrogantly between the rows of huts, occasionally shouting at the children. Any who dared to argue with them were rewarded with a blow from a rifle butt.
As they drove through the camp they watched a soldier strike an old woman several times about the head with a long cane, until blood appeared oozing from her hair. Elliot felt his scalp tighten with anger. Tuk grinned back at them and shrugged philosophically. ‘Life in the camps,’ he said. ‘But what can one do?’
‘We could kick the shit out of that bastard for a start!’ Slattery growled.
‘That would not be very wise, Mr Slattery. Van Saren’s people would only shoot you. The Thai army presence here is for show only. They are happy to let Van Saren police the camp. People are often shot trying to leave. Van Saren could not have his position undermined by allowing a foreigner to attack a soldier. Oh yes, and remember,’ he added, ‘to call him Marshal. Marshal Van. He is a little eccentric, but his control is very effective.’
‘Effective in what way?’ Elliot asked.
‘He controls distribution of the food that the ICRC and UNICEF truck in every day. And on the border, Mr Elliot, food is power.’
The car drew up outside a hut near the camp’s administration centre and they all got out. Tuk waved at the hut. ‘Van’s kingdom,’ he said. Not ten metres away a squalid, half-starved group of women were trying to wash themselves in the same dried-up slick that doubled as an open sewer.
‘And I thought I’d seen everything,’ Slattery said, brushing the flies from his face. ‘Jeez, if the world needed an enema this is where they’d stick the fucking tube.’
Elliot glanced at McCue, who had remained silent throughout their journey. He was impassive, his face betraying no trace of emotion. But his eyes missed nothing, and Elliot sensed a tension in him. He was beginning to regret having come here at all.
They climbed the steps and entered the empty hut. It was a shambles: two-tier bunk beds down one wall, crates of beer stacked against another and under the beds, empties strewn everywhere. Slattery kicked one across the floor and it rolled into a corner. There was a large desk and a swivel chair by the window. An electric fan whirred and clattered on the desk making erratic sweeps and stirring the papers strewn across the desktop. Several sheets had fallen to the floor. Crumpled cigarette packs lay on the desk, ashtrays brimming with half-smoked cigarettes. A window blind had slipped down to hang at an angle. The floorboards were crusted with dried spittle and the room stank of human sweat and stale cigarette smoke.
‘Cosy little place,’ Slattery said, and spat out a fly that had crept in at the corner of his mouth.
Tuk turned in the doorway. ‘Ah, here comes the Marshal now.’
Van Saren strode across the compound towards the hut, a small figure, ridiculous in US army trousers tied above the ankles, open sandals, a khaki shirt open to the waist and a pork pie hat set squarely on his head. A large crucifix hung round his neck, glinting in the sunlight. He had a cocky swagger emulated by the three thugs who accompanied him, all in khaki, bandoliers slung across shoulders, AK-47s tucked under arms. Each had a dirty scarf tied around his head.
Van grinned as he saw Tuk, revealing several gaps in a mouthful of yellowed teeth. He greeted him in Thai. The thugs ignored the newcomers, pushing past and propping their automatic rifles against the far wall. One climbed on to one of the top bunks and flopped across the sweat-stained sheet. Another dropped into the swivel chair and cast an indifferent glance over the strangers. The third sat on the edge of the desk and lit a cigarette.
Tuk made the introductions. He seemed out of place and ill-at-ease in these surroundings, dabbing again at his forehead with a now grubby handkerchief. ‘Saren, this is Mr Elliot and his colleagues.’
Elliot nodded and Van looked at them appraisingly before smiling broadly, as though proud of his bad teeth. ‘Welcome to Mak Moun,’ he said. ‘Here you under my protection. Protection of Khmer Serei.’ He paused. ‘You want go Cambodia, Than tell me. No problem. You enjoy stay my country.’ And he laughed uproariously, pleased with his joke. ‘I take you. No problem. When you want go?’
‘A week or so,’ Elliot said. ‘But I want to talk to some of your refugees first.’
Van waved a hand dismissively. ‘They talk you. No problem. I tell them. You want drink?’
‘Sure.’
Van giggled. ‘Hah! “Sure.” I like “Sure.”’ And he snapped an instruction at the thug sitting on the desk. Wordlessly the man rose and opened half a dozen bottles of beer to hand them round.
‘Not for me, Saren,’ Tuk said.
Van chuckled. ‘Sure you drink with us, Than. No problem.’ He turned to Elliot. ‘Than like glass with beer from refrigerator. He think we very uncivilized here.’
Tuk took a bottle reluctantly from the thug, who showed his first emotion in an evil grin. Van said something in Cambodian and all the thugs laughed. Then he raised his bottle. ‘Death Khmer Rouge bastard!’ he shouted.
Elliot took a swig from his bottle. The beer was hot.
The sound of raised voices made them turn. Through the open door, across the compound, outside the administration hut, they saw two white men engaged in an argument. One was big, unshaven, wearing jeans and a T-shirt, a Colt.45 stuck in his paunch. The other man was smaller, fair-haired, in pressed trousers and white shirt. The argument was heated and in English, although from the hut there was no telling what they were saying.
Suddenly the big man stepped forward and pushed the other back, his voice rising to a pitch of fury. The smaller man stood his ground, trying to calm aggression with reason. Then the big man swung a fist like a football and hit him full in the face, so that he staggered back and fell in the dust, blood pouring from his nose. As the big man advanced he scrambled backwards, getting hurriedly to his feet. He stood off, holding a handkerchief to his face, shouting angry words before turning and striding quickly to a jeep parked at the edge of the compound. He got in and drove off fast, tyres spinning in the dirt.
As the big man started towards their hut, Van turned grinning to the others. ‘That Garee,’ he said. ‘He clearing today food distribution with Red Cross. No problem.’
Tuk moved next to Elliot and said quietly, ‘I would advise caution with this man. He can be — unpredictable.’ He turned to McCue. ‘A fellow countryman of yours, Mr McCue.’ And Elliot saw McCue’s jaw set.
‘Cool it, Billy boy,’ Slattery said softly. McCue said nothing.
The big American climbed the steps and stopped in the doorway, taking in the new faces. ‘Who the hell are these guys!’ He didn’t look happy to see them.
‘Friends of Mr Tuk, Garee,’ Van said. ‘They want we take them cross border.’
The American grunted.
Tuk said, ‘Mr Ferguson is Saren’s Minister of Defence for the National Liberation Movement of Cambodia.’ Elliot picked up the irony, but it seemed to elude Van and Ferguson.
‘Marshal Van is the father and saviour of all Cambodia,’ Ferguson said, in a way that defied anyone to contradict him. He pushed his way past McCue and Slattery and flicked his head at the thug in the swivel chair. It was vacated at once. Ferguson slumped into the chair. ‘Fucking Red Cross think they own the place!’ His feet thudded on to the desk.
‘You tell them different, Garee,’ Van said.
‘Fucking right I do.’ He looked at Elliot. ‘And I’m not taking any shit off you guys either. Got that?’
‘Sure,’ Elliot said evenly.
‘Hah,’ giggled Van. ‘“Sure.” I like “Sure.”’
But Ferguson was glaring with ugly hostility at Elliot. ‘I don’t like your tone, pal. You show some respect for my father.’
Elliot looked at him steadily. ‘I’m surprised you have one.’
Ferguson frowned. He simmered for a moment, then seemed to explode from the inside out. ‘Marshal Van is my father! You trying to say something different?’ He was on his feet, hands on his hips, swivel chair clattering backwards.
Elliot said, ‘I said I didn’t think bastards had fathers.’
Slattery wondered at Elliot’s coolness and he began to feel good, adrenalin pumping. He glanced quickly round the room. The three thugs were taut and alert. Tuk was pale with fear and had stepped back towards the door. Van just watched, apparently quite relaxed. Outside somewhere a baby was crying. Ferguson was puce with rage. He drew his pistol from his belt and levelled it at Elliot’s head.
‘You apologize to my father!’ he shouted. ‘Or you’re a dead man!’
Slattery caught the slightest movement out of the corner of his eye, and a long blade glinted at Ferguson’s throat, the point drawing blood. McCue. He’d forgotten about McCue. Slattery swivelled round, snatched an AK-47 from the wall and turned it on the three thugs, almost before they could move. ‘Don’t even think about it, boys.’
Ferguson had gone rigid and he glanced quickly sideways to see McCue’s face very close to his own. He felt the heat of his breath, smelled the beer on it. McCue’s eyes chilled him. ‘Move that trigger a hair’s breadth and I’ll cut your fucking head off — pal.’ McCue’s voice was barely a whisper.
Elliot reached out and took the Colt from Ferguson’s hand and tucked it back in the belt below his paunch. ‘Didn’t anyone ever tell you it’s dangerous to point guns at people?’ he said.
The tension was broken by Van’s laugh, high-pitched, almost a giggle. ‘Good. Very, very good. Nice thing they on our side, huh Garee?’
Elliot nodded to McCue and Slattery. Slattery lowered the automatic and McCue slowly withdrew the knife, his eyes never leaving Ferguson for a moment. Ferguson slapped at his neck and looked at the blood smeared on his fingers. ‘Hey, you guys,’ he said. ‘Just a goddam joke.’
‘’Course it was.’ Elliot smiled and turned to Van. ‘How about letting me talk to some of those refugees now?’
‘Sure, sure. No problem. Garee, he take you.’
They walked through the camp, Elliot, Ferguson and one of the thugs, who kept a wary eye on Elliot. Ferguson seemed preoccupied, animosity apparently forgotten. ‘Hey, Elliot,’ he said. ‘Who is that guy?’
‘McCue?’
‘The runt with the knife.’
‘Vietnam vet.’
‘Shit, ain’t we all?’
‘Tunnel rat,’ Elliot said. ‘Did three tours.’
Ferguson whistled, an expression of awe. ‘Hey, I heard about them guys.’
Elliot smiled. ‘Be glad he didn’t fillet you.’
Ferguson lapsed again into contemplative silence, leading them abstractedly between rows of mean little huts. A group of children stopped and stared at them. Big brown eyes in shrunken faces, looking out through a film of indifference. There were no games played here, no cries of joy or petty squabbles, just the lacklustre eyes, brittle sticks of arms and legs poking out from torn T-shirts and dirty shorts. There was no curiosity in their stares, not even fear. Flies crawled over their faces, in mouths and nostrils, children too inured to them to bother.
Elliot was uneasy, disconcerted by their gaze. He had felt eyes like these on him before. But it was only now, for the first time in his life, that he realized what it was in these eyes that so troubled him. It was an emptiness. Where there’s no hope, what else could there be? It was a look he and the others had seen for more than sixteen years in the eyes that looked back at them from their shaving mirrors each morning. Strange, he had never thought of soldiers as victims before. Soldiers fought, lived or died, won or lost. These, these children, they were the real victims of war. Yet he knew that he, too, somewhere, at some time, had become a victim. He looked away, seeing only himself reflected in the dull stares. Ferguson shouted at the kids and waved an arm. But they continued to stand watching, unmoved.
It was dark in the huts after the glare of the sun. The air was fetid. Rows of makeshift beds, groups of ragged refugees, sometimes whole families camped in the gloom, eating, sleeping, dying there. The food dished out by Van Saren’s thugs was never quite enough, the medical services provided by the overstrained relief agencies at best inadequate. Prompted by the threats of Ferguson, often translated by his indifferent rifle-toting deputy, they told their stories. Elliot had wanted to ask questions — numbers of Khmer Rouge, the lie of the land, roads, rivers. But all he could do was listen, silenced by the simplicity of the narratives, the unemotional, undramatized pictures of hell painted in single bold brushstrokes.
One man sat on his own, squatting on the filthy blanket that covered his bed. His hair was matted, his face blank, his eyes dead. Ferguson’s deputy barked at him in Cambodian. The man ignored him and looked at Elliot. ‘I speak English,’ he said. ‘Are you another newspaper man?’
Elliot shook his head. ‘Just interested.’
‘No one is interested without a reason.’
Elliot felt rebuked, though there was no hint of it in the man’s voice. He acknowledged the truth. ‘I have a reason.’
The man shrugged. He didn’t want to know what it was. He had no cause to be interested. Ferguson sat on the bed opposite, picking his teeth with a bamboo splinter. ‘Get on with it!’
Elliot caught a movement out of the corner of his eye and saw McCue standing there. Ferguson glanced at him with unconcealed hostility. He didn’t like anyone to get the better of him, especially another Yank. ‘Where’s Slattery?’ Elliot asked.
‘Drinking.’ McCue pulled up a broken stool and sat down. ‘Thought I’d listen in.’
‘I ain’t got all day,’ Ferguson snapped. He prodded the refugee with his cane. ‘I told you to get on with it.’
The man shrugged. He told them his name was Chan Cheong and that he was twenty-eight. Elliot was shocked. He would have taken him for forty. ‘I was a truck driver in Lon Nol’s army,’ he said. ‘I lived with my wife, Key, and my two sons, in Phnom Penh. My oldest boy was eight, my youngest not yet two. When the Khmer Rouge came I threw away my uniform and when they emptied the city we took what we could carry and went north.
‘The road was choked with people just like us. Thousands and thousands of them, young and old, sick and dying. When the old and the sick fell in the road the soldiers made their families go on, and if the ones left behind were not dead already, they were shot and pushed to the side of the road or dumped in the fields to rot. That first day there were so many people on the road we covered no more than two or three miles. By the end of the day we had thrown away most of what we had, because it was too heavy to carry. And always the soldiers pushed us with their guns to make us hurry, or fired shots in the air.
‘Every so often there were checkpoints where they asked questions. Endless questions. And those they thought had been soldiers they took away, and made the rest go on. But we knew that the soldiers were shot. For myself, I said I had been a taxi driver and they believed me. They made us walk for days, and we did not dare to stop to rest or sleep. We had to walk through the night and carry our children. Children cannot walk for ever without sleep.
‘After about a week, we reached a town called Kompong Thom. There, a woman I had known in Phnom Penh identified me as a military driver. I said she was lying, but they took me away and made me join a work party of what they called liberated soldiers. We worked until we dropped, every day from first light until well after dark, building a dam. If anyone stopped for a rest he was shot. So for as long as we could stand we worked without stopping.
‘Sometimes they gave us a day off and told us we were invited to a merit festival. But those turned out to be long hours of indoctrination. We had to sit and listen to endless communist slogans blasted out from loudspeakers. The only good thing about the merit festivals was that I had the chance to be with my family again, if only for a few hours.
‘Then one day we were told there was to be a big freedom celebration for all the newly liberated who had arrived from Phnom Penh. We were to wear our best clothes for the occasion, and were taken in buses to a Buddhist temple on the mountain. There were about two hundred of us gathered there. Former soldiers, officers, doctors, nurses, teachers. Everyone was very frightened when they locked us in. But the guards would not answer our questions, telling us only that everything would become clear to us at the meeting that night.
‘It was raining and dark when they started to call us out, one family at a time. I think I knew then that we were to be killed. Everyone did, but no one said it. It was nearly three hours before they called my name, and Key and myself went out carrying our boys. A soldier told us to follow him and took us down a path through the woods. Another group of soldiers was waiting at a clearing. They were sheltering from the rain under the trees and smoking. When we came they got up and tied our hands. But I held my arms taut so that the knot was not tight and I could loosen it. They asked me again what my work was. A taxi driver, I told them. You’re lying, they said. You drove for the military. Then they asked my wife, what did your husband do? She was in tears and could lie no longer. He drove for the military, she said. And I knew that we had no hope.
‘They took the baby from her arms and she pleaded to let them die together. She screamed when they blindfolded her and then bayoneted the child. Then they bayoneted my oldest boy. They had not blindfolded me. I was to watch as they stripped my wife and stuck their bayonets into her. I turned and ran into the woods, trying to free my hands as I went. They fired after me, dozens of rounds, but I was more frightened of the bayonets than the bullets. Then I fell down a steep slope and into a dry stream bed, and rolled under some ferns that hid me. A grenade went off and I was showered with damp earth. But in the dark they could not find me and finally they gave up. I think, maybe, I was the only person in the temple that night to escape with his life.
‘Early next morning I started to walk, heading north until daylight. Always I walked at night and slept in the day. It did not take me long to reach Siem Reap. But there were many soldiers there, so I circled the town and went by Angkor Wat. I had never before seen the temples and I wept at the sight of them.’
He paused for a few moments and brushed a fly carelessly from his lips. ‘There is not much more to tell. I kept myself alive foraging for food in the forest, walking, walking, always north and then west. I saw many patrols, and once or twice I was nearly caught. But I was lucky. Eventually I reached the border with Thailand.’ He dropped his head a little then looked directly at Elliot. ‘I cannot say I am free. I cannot say I am alive. I wish I had died by the bayonet with my wife, so that our blood should have run together in the soil of my country.’ There was no emotion in his voice, or his eyes, and Elliot understood what he had meant when he said he was not alive.
‘You finished?’ Ferguson asked. The man nodded.
Elliot turned to McCue. ‘Let’s get out of here.’
Outside they blinked in the sunlight, flies in their hair, on their clothes, in their faces. Ferguson went off shouting at a group of children. ‘I never had a reason for killing before,’ McCue said quietly.
Elliot looked at him. ‘The only reason you need is the money that’s going to buy your boy a better life.’ There was an edge to his voice that made McCue turn his head. Elliot stared back with cold, hard, blue eyes. McCue held the look for some moments then shrugged and walked away towards the hut where Slattery was still drinking beer with Van Saren.
Chapter Fourteen
I
Lotus sat repairing a shirt by the light of an oil lamp. It saved electricity. Old habits died hard. Billy had gone out the night before without telling her where. He had returned late and left early again in the morning. He had said nothing of the men who came two nights ago and talked with him for several hours. She had not needed to ask who they were. She knew. She knew by their eyes, for she’d seen that look in Billy’s eyes, too. In the early days, when he had first come from Vietnam.
In the back room the baby gave a little cry. She turned her head and listened. The child shifted restlessly for some moments and then was silent. Asleep still. Dreaming. She wondered what he dreamed. His dreams would not be like hers. She dreamt very little now. Her waking dreams had long since faded. Dreams of America, of an escape from poverty and squalor, from endless nights in darkened bars where every groping GI made promises of freedom, promises that were never fulfilled. Sex had been mechanical, a living earned with a false smile and a soft caress, rewarded by money and brutality, void of emotion, empty of hope.
Billy had been different, quiet and gentle. At first he bought her things, took her places during the day. They never spoke much, just sat in cafés, walked by the river. But, bit by bit, she had told him everything about herself: her family in the north, the paddy fields and the poverty. The brothers and sisters her father could not feed. She had been only fifteen when they sent her to the city to sit behind a mirrored screen, a number pinned to her blouse, alongside eighty or a hundred other girls all with the same story to tell. The doctor came to examine them once a week, like a butcher checking the freshness of the meat.
Billy had told her nothing about himself. Then one day he had said that he no longer wanted her to work the bars. She had protested. How was she to live? She needed to work. For a while he had said no more about it. He had been morose and cold. Then nothing. He just disappeared. Two weeks, maybe three, and she had thought she would never see him again. It happened. A man took a fancy to you, lavished you with money and gifts, told you he loved you and wanted to take you away from it all. Then he would be sent back home and know that he could not take you with him. A brief illusion. A candle that burned too bright to be real. Then Billy turned up at the club one night, took her by the hand and pulled her out into the street.
‘You’re quitting. Now,’ he said. She had pulled herself free and told him he was mad, and he’d said quite simply, ‘I want to marry you.’
He had looked her straight in the eye, and she knew that he meant it. He had never told her he loved her, or promised her anything, but it was all there in his dark tragic eyes. She had wondered what America would be like. Reality, she knew, could never be like the dream. But she was never to know. He had bought them a house on the klongs. He was never going home, he said.
But it had been an escape of a sorts. She had not loved him, not then, had not known what love was. But they had found peace together, a kind of happiness she had not experienced since childhood. He had never told her where the money came from, though sometimes he had been away for weeks on end. But they had never wanted for anything and so she never asked.
She had found herself returning to the ways of her mother, and her mother before her. All the values she had rejected, the heritage she had wished to trade for the dream that had been America. She was Thai, and she was happy in the knowledge of who she was.
But Billy had changed since their child was born. The inner peace they had found together was gone, like the still surface of a pond broken by the monsoon rains. And the trouble in his heart was reflected in his eyes, like mirrors of his soul.
She finished with the shirt, and was padding through to check the mosquito net around the baby’s sleeping mat when she heard the bump of a small boat against the landing stage and Billy’s step on the stairs. Something had happened, she knew. It was in those eyes that spoke to her more eloquently than the words he used so seldom and so sparingly.
‘When will you be going?’ she asked.
He shrugged, avoiding her eyes. ‘A week.’
‘And when will you be back?’ She felt the tension in him.
‘Listen,’ he said, ‘when I get back we’re going home.’
‘This is my home. I thought it was your home too.’
He glanced through to the room where the baby slept. ‘There’s more chance for him in America.’ She squatted on the floor and examined the shirt she had mended. He lit a cigarette. He had been smoking more these past two days. ‘If — if I don’t come back...’ She looked up. ‘If I don’t come back, I want you to take him anyway. There’ll be plenty of money and my folks’ll look after you.’
She shook her head. ‘I don’t want money, or America. I want a husband, and a father for my child.’
He stood for a moment, then turned and went out on to the terrace. She heard the creak of his old rocking chair. After some minutes she rose slowly from the floor and went out beside him. The sky was thick with stars, like the eyes of Heaven gazing down upon the affairs of men. She didn’t even look at him. ‘Don’t go, Billy,’ she said. ‘I love you.’
He looked up and felt the sting of tears in his eyes. She had never told him that before. No one had.
II
‘There’s a gentleman been waiting to see you,’ the receptionist told Elliot when he got back to the hotel. She nodded towards a man sitting on one of the large sofas dotted around the reception lounge. Elliot and Slattery turned to look.
‘It’s Ang,’ Elliot said. ‘I’ll catch you later.’
Slattery disappeared towards the lifts. Ang rose and held out his hand as Elliot approached. Elliot sat down without taking it. Ang’s smile of greeting faded and he resumed his seat. ‘Do you have the stuff I asked for?’ Elliot said.
‘Yes.’ Ang lifted a large buff envelope from the seat beside him. ‘The daily routine and layout of the commune near Siem Reap. It was not easy to come by, Mistah Elliot.’
‘Is it accurate?’
‘As accurate as the recollection of half-starved refugees can be.’ Ang paused. ‘The money has been lodged and credited to the account number you gave me.’
‘I know,’ Elliot said. ‘I checked.’
‘The second payment will be released just as soon as my wife and family are delivered safely to me here in Thailand.’
Elliot looked at Ang with ill-concealed contempt. He remembered the story Chan Cheong had told him in that stinking hut in Mak Moun. He remembered the dead look in the eyes of the refugee. Eyes that had watched his wife and children bayoneted to death. I cannot say I am free. I cannot say I am alive, he had said. And here was a man who had left his wife and family to their fate. Here was a man who was free, who was alive, who had the money to buy off his conscience and the memory of his betrayal.
‘Will there be penalties?’ Elliot said. ‘If I don’t come back with a full complement.’
‘I don’t think I understand, Mistah Elliot.’
‘I mean, are you paying by the head? A third each for your wife, your daughter and your son? After all, we’re not even sure where your son is.’
Ang faced out Elliot’s contempt impassively. ‘They paid you by the head in Vietnam, did they not?’
Elliot was momentarily taken aback. Ang had done his homework. The little Cambodian pressed home his advantage. ‘I’m paying you to try, Mistah Elliot.’ And a moment of pain flitted across his face. ‘If you succeeded in bringing only one...’ But he shied away from the thought.
Elliot said, ‘I wouldn’t raise your hopes, Mr Ang. It’ll be a miracle if you see any of them alive again.’
III
Slattery lay back in the darkness of his room and felt the pain spreading from below his ribs. He imagined the cancer inside like a giant crab gnawing away at him, growing fat as he grew thin. He had taken some painkillers and knew it would pass. But he knew, too, that it would return, again and again, with ever-increasing frequency, stealing the life away from him. The worst part was that he didn’t want to die. He looked back with a bitter irony over all the years he’d thought he hadn’t cared, the risks he’d taken, the life he had laid on the line time and again. But then, death had never been a certainty as it was now. Death was what happened to the other guy.
He screwed his eyes tight shut and knew he was only feeling sorry for himself. And he despised self-pity. It could turn a man, change him, make him afraid. He’d never been afraid of anything or anyone in his life. And he didn’t want to start now. Didn’t want to become a man he would not recognize. It was too late to start trying to come to terms with a new self. He’d had enough trouble with the old one. His only regret was that he’d never had children. Then, perhaps, some part of him might have lived on. After all, that’s what it was all about, wasn’t it? Procreation. Go forth and multiply, said the Lord.
He smiled wryly to himself. Well, it hadn’t been for want of trying. And he felt better knowing that in the midst of all his self-pity he could still smile. The old Mike Slattery was still there somewhere. Shit! He wasn’t going to let this bastard cancer beat him without a fight.
A soft knock at his door startled him. ‘Yeah?’
‘It’s Elliot.’
‘Come on in, chief.’ Slattery sat up on the bed self-consciously, as though Elliot might have been listening in on his thoughts, like a conversation overheard in the dark. He turned on the bedside light as Elliot entered. ‘What’s the score?’
Elliot looked at him curiously, and Slattery felt uncomfortable. ‘You mind if we talk?’
Slattery knew he wasn’t being asked. ‘Grab yourself a chair.’
Elliot pulled a seat out from the dresser and sat down. ‘Got a cigarette?’
‘Sure.’ Slattery tossed him one and lit another for himself. He knew Elliot only smoked when he felt stressed.
Elliot lit his cigarette and watched the smoke rise gently in the stillness. ‘It’s hot in here. Air conditioning broken down?’
Slattery shook his head. ‘Naw. Can’t sleep with it on, chief. Dries me out.’ He paused. ‘Something on your mind?’ Why did he feel that Elliot knew exactly what was going on in his?
‘Been worrying about you, Mike,’ Elliot said at length.
Slattery smiled unconvincingly. ‘No need to worry about me, chief. You know that.’
‘Do I?’
‘Well, I mean, why would you?’
‘You’ve lost weight. You’ve been behaving — oddly.’ Slattery said nothing. ‘I made a couple of phone calls last night, Mike. Mutual acquaintances Down Under.’
The skin tightened across Slattery’s scalp. ‘You know, then.’
Elliot nodded. ‘Why didn’t you tell me?’
‘Would you have taken me with you if I had?’
‘No.’
‘That’s why I didn’t tell you.’
‘I don’t like being lied to, Mike. Especially by a friend.’
‘I never lied to you, chief.’
‘By omission. It comes to the same thing.’
Slattery looked away. ‘I couldn’t face dying in a beach house somewhere. Just wasting away. Not me, chief. Not after what I been through.’
They were both silent for a long time. Then Elliot said, ‘I didn’t take you on so you could go and get yourself killed. I need you, Mike.’
‘I won’t let you down, chief. Honest I won’t. I’d just rather take the chance of dying like I’ve lived, you know? Rather than the other way.’ He looked directly at Elliot. ‘You’re still taking me with you, chief, aren’t you?’
Elliot seemed to look right through him. He drew slowly on his cigarette, then said, ‘Sure I am, Mike.’ He paused. ‘But I’m bringing you back, too.’
Slattery nodded. ‘You want a beer?’
Elliot smiled and drew a half-bottle of whisky from his back pocket. ‘The real MacKay,’ he said. ‘I thought we might get pissed.’
Slattery grinned.
I
Lotus sat repairing a shirt by the light of an oil lamp. It saved electricity. Old habits died hard. Billy had gone out the night before without telling her where. He had returned late and left early again in the morning. He had said nothing of the men who came two nights ago and talked with him for several hours. She had not needed to ask who they were. She knew. She knew by their eyes, for she’d seen that look in Billy’s eyes, too. In the early days, when he had first come from Vietnam.
In the back room the baby gave a little cry. She turned her head and listened. The child shifted restlessly for some moments and then was silent. Asleep still. Dreaming. She wondered what he dreamed. His dreams would not be like hers. She dreamt very little now. Her waking dreams had long since faded. Dreams of America, of an escape from poverty and squalor, from endless nights in darkened bars where every groping GI made promises of freedom, promises that were never fulfilled. Sex had been mechanical, a living earned with a false smile and a soft caress, rewarded by money and brutality, void of emotion, empty of hope.
Billy had been different, quiet and gentle. At first he bought her things, took her places during the day. They never spoke much, just sat in cafés, walked by the river. But, bit by bit, she had told him everything about herself: her family in the north, the paddy fields and the poverty. The brothers and sisters her father could not feed. She had been only fifteen when they sent her to the city to sit behind a mirrored screen, a number pinned to her blouse, alongside eighty or a hundred other girls all with the same story to tell. The doctor came to examine them once a week, like a butcher checking the freshness of the meat.
Billy had told her nothing about himself. Then one day he had said that he no longer wanted her to work the bars. She had protested. How was she to live? She needed to work. For a while he had said no more about it. He had been morose and cold. Then nothing. He just disappeared. Two weeks, maybe three, and she had thought she would never see him again. It happened. A man took a fancy to you, lavished you with money and gifts, told you he loved you and wanted to take you away from it all. Then he would be sent back home and know that he could not take you with him. A brief illusion. A candle that burned too bright to be real. Then Billy turned up at the club one night, took her by the hand and pulled her out into the street.
‘You’re quitting. Now,’ he said. She had pulled herself free and told him he was mad, and he’d said quite simply, ‘I want to marry you.’
He had looked her straight in the eye, and she knew that he meant it. He had never told her he loved her, or promised her anything, but it was all there in his dark tragic eyes. She had wondered what America would be like. Reality, she knew, could never be like the dream. But she was never to know. He had bought them a house on the klongs. He was never going home, he said.
But it had been an escape of a sorts. She had not loved him, not then, had not known what love was. But they had found peace together, a kind of happiness she had not experienced since childhood. He had never told her where the money came from, though sometimes he had been away for weeks on end. But they had never wanted for anything and so she never asked.
She had found herself returning to the ways of her mother, and her mother before her. All the values she had rejected, the heritage she had wished to trade for the dream that had been America. She was Thai, and she was happy in the knowledge of who she was.
But Billy had changed since their child was born. The inner peace they had found together was gone, like the still surface of a pond broken by the monsoon rains. And the trouble in his heart was reflected in his eyes, like mirrors of his soul.
She finished with the shirt, and was padding through to check the mosquito net around the baby’s sleeping mat when she heard the bump of a small boat against the landing stage and Billy’s step on the stairs. Something had happened, she knew. It was in those eyes that spoke to her more eloquently than the words he used so seldom and so sparingly.
‘When will you be going?’ she asked.
He shrugged, avoiding her eyes. ‘A week.’
‘And when will you be back?’ She felt the tension in him.
‘Listen,’ he said, ‘when I get back we’re going home.’
‘This is my home. I thought it was your home too.’
He glanced through to the room where the baby slept. ‘There’s more chance for him in America.’ She squatted on the floor and examined the shirt she had mended. He lit a cigarette. He had been smoking more these past two days. ‘If — if I don’t come back...’ She looked up. ‘If I don’t come back, I want you to take him anyway. There’ll be plenty of money and my folks’ll look after you.’
She shook her head. ‘I don’t want money, or America. I want a husband, and a father for my child.’
He stood for a moment, then turned and went out on to the terrace. She heard the creak of his old rocking chair. After some minutes she rose slowly from the floor and went out beside him. The sky was thick with stars, like the eyes of Heaven gazing down upon the affairs of men. She didn’t even look at him. ‘Don’t go, Billy,’ she said. ‘I love you.’
He looked up and felt the sting of tears in his eyes. She had never told him that before. No one had.
II
‘There’s a gentleman been waiting to see you,’ the receptionist told Elliot when he got back to the hotel. She nodded towards a man sitting on one of the large sofas dotted around the reception lounge. Elliot and Slattery turned to look.
‘It’s Ang,’ Elliot said. ‘I’ll catch you later.’
Slattery disappeared towards the lifts. Ang rose and held out his hand as Elliot approached. Elliot sat down without taking it. Ang’s smile of greeting faded and he resumed his seat. ‘Do you have the stuff I asked for?’ Elliot said.
‘Yes.’ Ang lifted a large buff envelope from the seat beside him. ‘The daily routine and layout of the commune near Siem Reap. It was not easy to come by, Mistah Elliot.’
‘Is it accurate?’
‘As accurate as the recollection of half-starved refugees can be.’ Ang paused. ‘The money has been lodged and credited to the account number you gave me.’
‘I know,’ Elliot said. ‘I checked.’
‘The second payment will be released just as soon as my wife and family are delivered safely to me here in Thailand.’
Elliot looked at Ang with ill-concealed contempt. He remembered the story Chan Cheong had told him in that stinking hut in Mak Moun. He remembered the dead look in the eyes of the refugee. Eyes that had watched his wife and children bayoneted to death. I cannot say I am free. I cannot say I am alive, he had said. And here was a man who had left his wife and family to their fate. Here was a man who was free, who was alive, who had the money to buy off his conscience and the memory of his betrayal.
‘Will there be penalties?’ Elliot said. ‘If I don’t come back with a full complement.’
‘I don’t think I understand, Mistah Elliot.’
‘I mean, are you paying by the head? A third each for your wife, your daughter and your son? After all, we’re not even sure where your son is.’
Ang faced out Elliot’s contempt impassively. ‘They paid you by the head in Vietnam, did they not?’
Elliot was momentarily taken aback. Ang had done his homework. The little Cambodian pressed home his advantage. ‘I’m paying you to try, Mistah Elliot.’ And a moment of pain flitted across his face. ‘If you succeeded in bringing only one...’ But he shied away from the thought.
Elliot said, ‘I wouldn’t raise your hopes, Mr Ang. It’ll be a miracle if you see any of them alive again.’
III
Slattery lay back in the darkness of his room and felt the pain spreading from below his ribs. He imagined the cancer inside like a giant crab gnawing away at him, growing fat as he grew thin. He had taken some painkillers and knew it would pass. But he knew, too, that it would return, again and again, with ever-increasing frequency, stealing the life away from him. The worst part was that he didn’t want to die. He looked back with a bitter irony over all the years he’d thought he hadn’t cared, the risks he’d taken, the life he had laid on the line time and again. But then, death had never been a certainty as it was now. Death was what happened to the other guy.
He screwed his eyes tight shut and knew he was only feeling sorry for himself. And he despised self-pity. It could turn a man, change him, make him afraid. He’d never been afraid of anything or anyone in his life. And he didn’t want to start now. Didn’t want to become a man he would not recognize. It was too late to start trying to come to terms with a new self. He’d had enough trouble with the old one. His only regret was that he’d never had children. Then, perhaps, some part of him might have lived on. After all, that’s what it was all about, wasn’t it? Procreation. Go forth and multiply, said the Lord.
He smiled wryly to himself. Well, it hadn’t been for want of trying. And he felt better knowing that in the midst of all his self-pity he could still smile. The old Mike Slattery was still there somewhere. Shit! He wasn’t going to let this bastard cancer beat him without a fight.
A soft knock at his door startled him. ‘Yeah?’
‘It’s Elliot.’
‘Come on in, chief.’ Slattery sat up on the bed self-consciously, as though Elliot might have been listening in on his thoughts, like a conversation overheard in the dark. He turned on the bedside light as Elliot entered. ‘What’s the score?’
Elliot looked at him curiously, and Slattery felt uncomfortable. ‘You mind if we talk?’
Slattery knew he wasn’t being asked. ‘Grab yourself a chair.’
Elliot pulled a seat out from the dresser and sat down. ‘Got a cigarette?’
‘Sure.’ Slattery tossed him one and lit another for himself. He knew Elliot only smoked when he felt stressed.
Elliot lit his cigarette and watched the smoke rise gently in the stillness. ‘It’s hot in here. Air conditioning broken down?’
Slattery shook his head. ‘Naw. Can’t sleep with it on, chief. Dries me out.’ He paused. ‘Something on your mind?’ Why did he feel that Elliot knew exactly what was going on in his?
‘Been worrying about you, Mike,’ Elliot said at length.
Slattery smiled unconvincingly. ‘No need to worry about me, chief. You know that.’
‘Do I?’
‘Well, I mean, why would you?’
‘You’ve lost weight. You’ve been behaving — oddly.’ Slattery said nothing. ‘I made a couple of phone calls last night, Mike. Mutual acquaintances Down Under.’
The skin tightened across Slattery’s scalp. ‘You know, then.’
Elliot nodded. ‘Why didn’t you tell me?’
‘Would you have taken me with you if I had?’
‘No.’
‘That’s why I didn’t tell you.’
‘I don’t like being lied to, Mike. Especially by a friend.’
‘I never lied to you, chief.’
‘By omission. It comes to the same thing.’
Slattery looked away. ‘I couldn’t face dying in a beach house somewhere. Just wasting away. Not me, chief. Not after what I been through.’
They were both silent for a long time. Then Elliot said, ‘I didn’t take you on so you could go and get yourself killed. I need you, Mike.’
‘I won’t let you down, chief. Honest I won’t. I’d just rather take the chance of dying like I’ve lived, you know? Rather than the other way.’ He looked directly at Elliot. ‘You’re still taking me with you, chief, aren’t you?’
Elliot seemed to look right through him. He drew slowly on his cigarette, then said, ‘Sure I am, Mike.’ He paused. ‘But I’m bringing you back, too.’
Slattery nodded. ‘You want a beer?’
Elliot smiled and drew a half-bottle of whisky from his back pocket. ‘The real MacKay,’ he said. ‘I thought we might get pissed.’
Slattery grinned.
Chapter Fifteen
Ny lay awake on the hard wooden floor with dread and hate in her heart, listening for the footfall of the young cadre on the steps of the hut. Perhaps tonight he would not come. The pain and discomfort of her period had been a merciful release from his nightly visits, and she had told him it was still on her for several days after it had passed. He would know it must be over by now, so she expected he would come. All the other women, her mother as well, were asleep. Escape for a few brief hours from this living death. At the far end of the hut one of the women moaned in her shallow slumber. Perhaps she was dreaming of how life used to be. Or perhaps her dreams were of soldiers in black pyjamas and red-chequered scarves, and Angkar, and fear and death. Perhaps, for some, even sleep was no escape.
She heard a creak on the wooden steps and tensed. He had come for her, and from somewhere she must summon the strength and courage to face again the shame of his sexual gratification. But she wondered how much longer it would be possible. She had known others to take their own lives, but she did not think she had the courage for that.
The silhouette of the cadre appeared in the open doorway as she sat up. He seemed smaller, was wearing a scarf round his head. ‘Ny,’ he whispered. He had never called her by her name before, yet the whisper of it was familiar. She rose and moved quietly to the doorway and found herself looking into the dark face of a young boy. A face she knew from somewhere in her past. But still it took her a moment to recognize it.
‘Hau!’ Her brother’s name slipped involuntarily from her lips, and though whispered, seemed loud in the quiet of the night.
‘Shhhh!’ He put a finger to his lips and signalled for her to follow. She slipped quickly down the steps behind him, and in the shadow of the hut they embraced. She held him tightly, never wanting to let go, emotion choking her. How often she had known the heat of his body when he had slipped into her bed on cold nights and snuggled up to her for warmth. But how was it possible? She held him at arm’s length to look at him and brush the hair from his eyes.
‘Hau, what are you doing here?’
He still had the face of a boy, but his eyes were much, much older and he spoke quickly and with quiet authority. ‘Ny, they are sending me away.’
‘Away? Away where?’
‘To Phnom Penh. They say the Vietnamese might attack, and they want more soldiers to defend the city in case of invasion.’
Ny was stunned. It was the first she had heard of it. A Vietnamese invasion! Perhaps, then, there was still hope. For surely the Khmer Rouge could not withstand the might of the Vietnamese army. But her heart froze with the same thought. They were sending her brother to fight. And the fanatics of the Khmer Rouge would urge their troops to fight to the last, and shoot those who refused. ‘Oh, Hau,’ she whispered. ‘You must not go.’
‘I have no choice,’ he said. ‘But I will not fight. I will run away.’
‘They will kill you.’
‘I will take the chance,’ he said simply.
‘I will get Mother.’ She turned towards the steps, but he stopped her.
‘No. I cannot face my mother.’ And there was a look of shame in his eyes. ‘I have done things,’ he said. ‘They made me do things...’ And he could not even face his sister.
Ny took him again in her arms. ‘Oh, Hau.’ When she looked once more into his face she saw that he was crying. He brushed away the tears, ashamed of them too.
‘Tell her,’ he said, ‘that I will go and hide at our house in the city. If our country is freed then she must look for me there.’
Ny looked at him with pain in her heart. She knew it was impossible. They heard footsteps and drew back further into the shadows. Ny saw the young cadre approach the hut and climb the steps. ‘You must go,’ she whispered urgently to Hau. She kissed him. ‘We will look for you.’ And she hurried out to the foot of the steps as the cadre climbed back down. He looked at her suspiciously.
‘What are you doing here?’
‘I was waiting for you.’
He seemed surprised, then smiled. ‘Come,’ he said. ‘I have not much time tonight.’ And he led her quickly away through the stilts. She glanced back and saw the shadow of Hau darting away between the huts, and she wondered if she would ever see her brother again.
Chapter Sixteen
A crystal chandelier hung overhead, tinkling gently in the breeze of the air conditioning. The air was cool rising from the cold marble floor. Elliot and Slattery stood uncomfortably in the opulence of their surroundings. A beautiful Thai girl in a long pink silk skirt and white blouse had let them in, asking them to wait. She had then tiptoed away into the depths of the house. Somewhere, they had heard a bell ring twice, followed by a deep silence. Slattery scuffed his heels impatiently, hard leather on marble echoing around this grand entrance hall. Erotic Greek statues stood on plinths, a chaise longue against one wall beneath a painting of a Renaissance nude, white and plump with blue-veined breasts. Velvet curtains were drawn on tall windows.
‘I thought you might like to see some of my acquisitions before we go back to the house.’ La Mère Grace’s voice echoed off marble. They looked up to see her descending the broad staircase, elegant and beautiful, bearing herself with a poise that comes only with age. Her white dress buttoned up to a high collar at the neck, and clung to her contours in an elegant sweep to her ankles. It was split up one side, almost to the top of her thigh, allowing her to move freely and reveal glimpses of a long, shapely leg with each step. Her black hair was piled high to show off her fine-boned features and small, perfect ears. Her smile was radiant, betraying a hint of ironic amusement. ‘My car is waiting,’ she said.
The car was large, black and American, with smoked windows. It was driven by a girl in a chauffeur’s uniform and peaked cap who drove them smoothly, and with assurance, through the night traffic of Bangkok to a nightclub for members only. A small waiter in a perfectly fitting dinner suit bowed, led them to a reserved table and brought them drinks. The hostesses — they were not bar girls here — were discreet and extremely beautiful, all in white like their mentor, but without her poise. A band played soft seductive American jazz, and, through an archway, wealthy men dined with elegant women. Subdued lighting was concealed above red velvet drapes and the drinks, served from a long polished mahogany bar, were expensive. But they paid for nothing.
‘Here we cater for Bangkok’s elite,’ Grace said. ‘Government ministers, high-ranking civil servants and army generals, the captains of Thai industry. The Prime Minister himself dines here on occasion. But it is, I think, not quite your style. As I told you, we cater for all tastes.’ She pushed her glass languidly away. ‘Drink up, gentlemen, and we shall take a little trip downmarket.’
Downmarket, it transpired, was one of the better massage parlours on Patpong Road. A girl rose from a desk, pressed her palms together, and bowed as Grace led them in. ‘Madame,’ she said deferentially.
‘These gentlemen would like to see the facilities we offer here,’ Grace said.
‘Of course.’ The girl led them through to a red-carpeted lounge dotted with deep, soft sofas and armchairs. A crimson flock wallpaper covered three walls and the ceiling. The fourth wall was a large window looking on to a chamber where something like a hundred girls sat in tiers, chatting idly. Each had a number pinned to her dress. Some were plain, some pretty, others indifferent. Most looked bored, and all were very young. None, Elliot thought, over twenty.
‘Here, discretion is assured,’ Grace said. ‘Our customers need not feel embarrassed, for the girls cannot see them.’ She ran a cool hand lightly across the glass. ‘A two-way mirror. All they can see is a reflection of themselves.’ But Elliot noticed that none of the girls looked in their direction. Perhaps they were ashamed of their own reflections. ‘A man may choose a girl by her number, and he will be taken to a small room where the girl of his choice will shower him and then give him a body massage. Soap or oil is applied for maximum lubrication. Any further activity is a matter for private negotiation between the girl and the customer. Naturally we take ninety per cent. And, of course, our girls are very clean. They are checked regularly by our doctor.’
‘I’ve heard,’ Elliot said, ‘that many of these girls are sold to establishments like this by their families. Peasant girls straight from the paddies. Bought and sold like slaves.’
Grace looked at him with feigned surprise. ‘Do I detect a hint of disapproval, Mr Elliot?’ She shook her head. ‘Do you really think they would be better off in the paddies, working from dawn till dusk, thigh-deep in water, legs scarred by leeches, skin burned by the sun? Such women are old by the time they are thirty, dead by fifty — if they are lucky. Here they make more money than they could ever have dreamed, are well fed, receive the best medical care.’
‘And end up in squalid little klong houses, working sleazy bars up dark alleys when they are no longer young enough or attractive enough for your customers.’
Grace smiled and turned to Slattery. ‘Are there any of my girls who catch your eye, Mr Slattery?’
‘Two of ’em, actually, ma’am.’
She called over the girl who had shown them in. ‘See to it that Mr Slattery has everything he wants, with my compliments.’
The girl bowed and Slattery grinned. ‘See you back at the hotel, then, chief.’
In the car Grace said to Elliot, ‘I thought we would never get rid of him.’
Her room was on the first floor of her rambling mansion house, known throughout Bangkok as Chez La Mère Grace. ‘It was what they called my house in Phnom Penh,’ she said. ‘The house there was my mother’s really, and I took on the name when she died and left me the business. She called herself Grace. She wanted an English name. She thought it very chic.’
‘She was a Cambodian, your mother?’
‘Oh, yes. Her real name was Lim Any. I was the result of a liaison with a high-ranking French diplomat. But they never married.’ She finished pouring their drinks at a glass cabinet, kicked off her shoes, and padded across the thick-piled carpet to kneel opposite him on one of the huge soft cushions scattered around a foot-high circular table. The room was sumptuous. Velvet drapes, antique cabinets, exotic trunks with gold clasps. There were mirrors everywhere you looked, even on the ceiling above an enormous circular bed spread with red silk sheets and white cushions. Two or three discreetly placed lamps cast light on key areas, and left others in pools of mysterious darkness.
‘You would have loved Cambodia,’ she said. ‘The Cambodia I knew.’
‘Tell me about it.’ He settled back with his drink.
Her smile seemed distant as she drifted back to a world gone for ever, a world she had loved like life itself, and for which there could never be a satisfactory replacement. ‘Were you ever in Phnom Penh?’ He shook his head. ‘It was a beautiful city, Mr Elliot. It had all the grace and style of the French, the brashness of the Chinese, and yet at its heart was still very Cambodian, full of history. You have seen photographs of Angkor Wat?’
‘Sure.’
‘Then perhaps you will understand a little of Cambodia. But you must see it to feel it. The temples symbolize everything that was great about a race that once ruled the whole of Indochina. Then, lost for hundreds of years, they were rediscovered in the last century by a French explorer, a mirror on a long-forgotten past.’
‘I think we could skip the history lesson,’ Elliot said.
She smiled with something like condescension. ‘Perhaps you have to be Cambodian to understand.’ She sipped her drink thoughtfully. ‘The Fifties and Sixties were a golden era in our more recent history, under the rule of that fat little man, Prince Sihanouk.’
‘I heard he was a bit of an eccentric.’
‘Oh, yes, he was eccentric, Mr Elliot. But you mustn’t mistake eccentricity for stupidity. The Prince was successful in keeping Cambodia out of the war in Vietnam for nearly twenty years before the Americans bombed our country in 1970. Oh, some people thought him mad. He had a penchant for making his own movies, in which he nearly always starred himself as some awful gangster. Of course, I was invited to the palace on the banks of the Mekong many times with my mother. I saw several of his films. They were truly dreadful. He played the saxophone, too. Not badly. And wrote music for performances by the Royal Dancers. He preserved many of the traditions of Cambodia. The people turned out in their thousands every year for the Fêtes des Eaux, a sort of Oxford and Cambridge boat race on the Mekong, held during the rainy season when the waters of the river and the Tonle Sap reverse their currents and flow back on themselves. It is one of the wonders of the world.’
Elliot yawned and she chided him with mock severity. ‘I don’t think you are taking me very seriously, Mr Elliot.’
‘Tell me about Chez La Mère Grace.’
Her smile was resigned. ‘At Chez La Mère Grace,’ she said, ‘time was unimportant. There were no clocks, as you will see there are none here. Sex cannot be measured by the minute or the hour, or even by the day. Nor is it something to be done in the dark, furtive and secret.’ She paused. ‘Another drink?’
‘Sure.’
She rose and crossed to the cabinet to refill their glasses. ‘Of course, not everyone came to Chez La Mère Grace for sexual gratification. A night out in Phnom Penh was not complete without a visit to my house for a few pipes of opium. I had one of the best boy pipes’ — she pronounced it peeps — ‘in the city. A couple would dine at a club along the river then come to the Rue Ohier, in the fashionable centre of Phnom Penh, to smoke in one of my upstairs rooms.’ She came back with their drinks and curled up on a cushion, revealing the curve of one of her legs all the way up to the top of her thigh, brown and smooth and tempting. ‘A good boy pipe is a very rare commodity. He must be able to cook the opium over the flame of a candle so that it does not burn but remains soft and malleable in order that the pipe may be primed to perfection. Only one or two pulls at each pipe are necessary to achieve that pitch of exquis-ite harmony and peace that the smoker seeks.’
Elliot took a pull at his second drink. ‘How did the war affect you?’
‘At first not at all. We were all very sad when the Prince was driven into exile after Lon Nol’s coup. The General was little more than an American puppet, and that gave the Khmer Rouge a popular support which they had never previously enjoyed. If it had not been for the interference of the Americans, the Khmer Rouge could never have taken power. They would have remained a small, ineffectual group of guerrillas buried away somewhere in the jungle.
‘We sometimes heard the sound of distant guns from the swimming pool where we would spend our afternoons in the sun, cooling ourselves in the water and sipping chilled Chablis. I could never understand why the Cambodian people felt it necessary to fight, to make war.’
‘Understanding is seldom found in swimming pools and glasses of chilled wine.’
The contempt in his voice stung her to reply. ‘Nor is it to be found in England or America, where you know nothing of Cambodia or its people. Cambodians are a lazy, happy people, Mr Elliot. They live in a rich, fertile and beautiful land. They have never had reason to do other than smile and give thanks to Buddha.’
Elliot remembered the face of the refugee at Mak Moun. He had had no reason to do either.
‘In the last months it became clear that the Khmer Rouge were going to win,’ she said. ‘Lon Nol’s army was corrupt, had no will to fight. The officers sold the food for the troops, the money for the war effort lined their pockets. Dollars for Cambodia. When the Khmer Rouge were only a few kilometres from the city they would still prefer to spend their nights drinking or smoking opium or buying favours from my girls. Eventually I barred army officers from my house. And a few weeks later I was forced to close up, take what I could, and flee the country. I would certainly have been killed had I stayed.’ She got up and moved to a trunk by the bed. ‘All I have left now of Cambodia are my memories and my jewellery.’
With a small key hanging on a fine gold chain round her neck, she unlocked the trunk and threw back the lid. She lifted out tray after tray of necklaces and earrings and gold and silver bracelets, rings and brooches. ‘These’ — she held out a necklace and bracelet set of hand-engraved silver — ‘were my mother’s. Made for her by the Prince’s own silversmith, Minh Mol. There are others, too. Earrings, cufflinks, brooches, crafted by men now dead whose skills have been lost for ever. Only in Cambodia could you find such men.’
Elliot examined the fine detail of the engraving. Miniatures of many of the scenes hewn out of the stone of the temples of Angkor Wat. ‘And this’ — Grace passed him a small, round, pink tin box, scraped and dented — ‘is my most prized possession. Given me by one of my regular customers.’ Painted in faded gold on the lid of the box was the name of the shop where it had been bought: BIJOUTERIE HUE-THANH, 121 RUE OHIER, PHNOM PENH. ‘It is such an unprepossessing little box,’ she said, ‘I could not imagine what manner of cheap jewellery it might contain.’
Elliot lifted the lid to reveal a gold bracelet on a bed of tissue. It was a good inch wide, comprising thousands of tiny links, each hand-crafted in the form of a miniature star. He lifted it carefully out. It was heavy, flexible, every link moving freely. He turned it over and marvelled at the way a human hand had ever been able to work such tiny pieces of metal with such fine precision. ‘It’s beautiful,’ he said.
She smiled. ‘I took it to a jeweller in Paris one time, and he could not believe it had been made by hand. He said there was not a jeweller in France who could make such a thing.’
Elliot put it back in the box. ‘Did you go to Paris often?’
‘I was educated there, and in my teens was trained as a ballet dancer. I still do the exercises to keep me supple and fit. The body is like a musical instrument, Mr Elliot. It requires care and fine tuning for it to perform at its best.’ She ran her hands down over her breasts and the flatness of her stomach as if to illustrate her point. ‘I am very proud of my body. I am forty-five years old, but I have the body of a woman half that age. And I have the benefit of age and experience to make me a better lover than any twenty-year-old.’
She took the pink tin box and shut it away in the trunk with the rest of her jewellery. ‘I cannot keep calling you Mr Elliot. You have a name, I suppose?’
‘Jack.’
‘Ah, Jacques. It was the name of my mother’s lover. My father.’ She pulled a bell cord by the bed. And almost immediately the double doors of the room were opened by the girl who had admitted them earlier. She bowed and Grace spoke to her briskly in Thai. Then she turned to Elliot. ‘If you will follow my girl she will take you to your room.’ He raised an eyebrow. ‘Do not worry, Jacques. This is not goodbye. Only au revoir.’
Elliot followed the girl down a long hallway, through an arch, and she opened the door to a large bedroom all in white — white carpet, white walls, white furniture, white silk sheets on the bed. Another door led off to a shower room. She left him, and he wandered around the room touching things, wondering about Grace. This was not what he had expected. He turned as the door to the bedroom opened. Two young women in long white robes padded in. One was slightly taller than the other, with long dark hair. The smaller girl had her hair cut short. They were both pretty. They bowed, and the shorter one giggled. ‘We undress you,’ she said. Elliot shrugged. He wasn’t about to protest.
They undressed him slowly and with care, hands drifting caressingly over his chest and stomach, his buttocks and thighs. He allowed them to lead him into the shower room, where they both disrobed to reveal their nakedness. The shorter one turned on the shower, testing the water until the temperature was just right. They all stepped in together, and the girls began to lather him with scented soap from coloured bottles. Their hands slid over him with an effortless professionalism, leaving no part of him untouched.
Then somewhere in the depths of the house he heard a bell ring, and the girls drew away leaving him breathless and aching for fulfilment. ‘La Mère Grace want you now,’ said the smaller one. They slipped him into a towelling robe before taking a hand each and leading him from the shower. ‘You come with us.’
He was stung by a sense of shock as they swung the doors open. Grace lay naked, stretched out on the red sheets, a girl rising from between her legs to stand by the side of the bed. Grace’s eyes were closed. ‘Come to me, Jacques. Come to me now, quickly,’ she called.
As he approached the bed, the girl moved aside and melted away. Slowly he stepped from his robe and lowered himself between Grace’s thighs, her dancer’s body lean and perfect.
Afterwards they lay for a long time, bodies tangled, sweating and breathless. She kissed him gently all over his face, his nose, his eyes, his mouth, before taking his hand and rising from the bed to lead him to the shower.
When they had washed and dressed a girl brought in a tray from which she served them sweet-scented tea in tiny bone china cups. ‘Tea is always so refreshing,’ Grace said. ‘Don’t you think?’ She had a glow about her now and, if anything, looked even more beautiful. Elliot shrugged. He would have preferred whisky.
She emptied her cup and rose to take a wooden box, inlaid with ivory, from a cabinet at the far end of the room. She brought it back to the table and opened it. Inside were several rings and a pendant necklace, each set with the same large, translucent purple stones. She handed him one of the rings. ‘Alexandrite,’ she said. ‘Hold it up to the light and turn it slowly.’ Elliot did as she asked. The stone changed from purple to red, to green and then blue, as its cut surface refracted the changing light source. One colour bleeding subtly into the next. ‘I had them cut for me in Phnom Penh. They are not very expensive, but they are very beautiful.’ She paused. ‘Do you like the ring?’
Elliot turned it again in the light. ‘I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything quite like it.’
‘Keep it,’ she said. He looked at her, surprised. ‘To remember me by.’
‘But I will see you again.’
She shook her head solemnly. ‘No.’
‘Why not?’
‘Because, Mr Elliot, it would never be the same a second time.’
It was some hours later that Elliot closed the door of his hotel room and switched on the bedside lamp. He lay back on the bed and felt strangely empty as he fingered the cold cut surface of the alexandrite ring in his jacket pocket. As though she had stolen something from him, something from deep inside. The memory of her face still filled his eyes, the warmth of her skin against his still burned. Of course, he knew, she was right. It could never be the same again. The telephone rang and he reached out absently and picked up the receiver.
‘Where the hell you been, chief? I been trying to get you for hours.’
Something in Slattery’s voice rang an alarm bell. Elliot sat up, suddenly alert. ‘What’s wrong?’
‘You mean you ain’t heard?’
‘For Christ’s sake, Mike...!’
‘Bloody Vietnamese have just invaded Cambodia.’
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