by Barry Eisler
She shook her head slowly. “Nobody’s forcing me.”
He wondered if her distinction had been deliberate—that just because no one was forcing her didn’t mean she had a real choice.
He looked at her. Goddamn, she was pretty. The flat Khmer nose and cheekbones. A small mouth and beautifully full lips. And those big, dark eyes. He didn’t know how much longer he’d be able to keep doing this without at least really kissing her. But if he kissed her, he didn’t know how he’d stop.
“You know, in general, I don’t judge or begrudge how people earn a living. The truth is, I’ve done some questionable things myself. But I don’t… I don’t know Cambodia as well as I’d like. I’ve read about some of what goes on here, and I don’t want to contribute to it.”
She paused, maybe trying to divine his meaning. “Are you talking about sex slavery?”
He was glad she was being so frank, and felt foolish for his obliqueness. “That’s right.”
She nodded. “It’s a terrible problem. There are thirty-thousand child prostitutes in Cambodia.”
“I know, I’ve read some about it. Poverty, culture, porous borders, the aftermath of war… it’s so pervasive, I don’t see what can be done.”
“This is what I’m going to do with my degree. Help integrate rescued girls back into society.”
“You? But…”
She looked away. “I don’t think it will hurt my work to have some direct experience with the lives of sex workers.”
Dox didn’t say anything. He didn’t like thinking of her as a sex worker. And he didn’t like thinking there could be any connection at all between the kind of low-key freelance work Chantrea might do part-time of her own volition and what children were forced to do by traffickers.
“Psychological counseling,” she went on, shaking her head. “I guess it’s not much. But we have to do what we can, yes? Even if it’s just a little.”
He didn’t answer. He felt confused. It was one thing to know about some of Cambodia’s hidden horrors, but now it was like he was brushing up against them, things he could sense but not quite see. And she’d made him feel small about saying nothing could be done. She was right, she was doing something.
She said, “Are you trying to ask… if I wanted to come back from the bar with you? If I want to be here with you now?”
Her question surprised him, though upon reflection it actually made perfect sense. “Well, actually, I’m not sure. Did you? Do you?”
“You mean, would I keep seeing you if you didn’t keep giving me money?”
“I guess that’s one way of clarifying things, yeah.”
“Why don’t you stop, then, and see what happens?”
He thought about that. She was sweet and smart and agreeable. And so tasty-looking. But he couldn’t afford to fall in love with some university student. Not while he was in the life, anyway. Maybe one day, but not now.
“All right,” she said into the silence. “You don’t seem to be using the money to buy the obvious thing. So maybe you’re using it to buy something else?”
He suddenly had the feeling her psychology degree was going to be entirely redundant. “I don’t know. What would that be?”
“You really don’t know?”
Was he being an asshole? Making her play guessing games because he didn’t want to be forthright himself?
“Maybe I do. If I give you money, that’s our context. I don’t have to feel I owe you anything else.”
“And if you made love to me, you would. Even if you were paying me.”
The frank way she said it both aroused and embarrassed him. He was glad he wasn’t pressed against her. And that in the dim light she couldn’t see the red he felt creeping into his face.
“I like you, Chantrea,” he said. “I guess you can tell that. And I guess that’s the problem.”
“Why is it a problem?”
“Because it’s not what I came here to do. I’m just here on business, and I want to keep things on a business level. Which, I’ll admit, I initially thought I was doing with you. But… I don’t know. Like I said, I like you. And I wasn’t sure what you wanted, or what you expected.”
“You mean you were afraid that if we made love, it wouldn’t be just business, even if you were giving me money?”
“That’s right.”
“So it wasn’t just about making me do something I didn’t really want to.”
Damn, not just smart, but relentless. “No. Now that we’re talking about it, not just that.”
She looked away for a moment, then back to him. “I can’t say I think you’re wrong about any of it.”
“I’m not sure that’s exactly a comfort, under the circumstances.”
“You’re an honest man, Dox.”
That hurt. “Actually, no, I’m not.”
“You are about the things that count. And you’re right. I like you a lot. If you make love to me, I’ll probably get attached to you.”
He couldn’t look at her. He felt like he’d been exposed as selfish and manipulative, and a hypocrite, too. And he was also ashamed at how Nessie had swelled at the way she’d put it. Not, “if you were to make love to me, I would get attached.” No, it wasn’t hypothetical. It was a straight-up if/then proposition, and entirely up to him, too.
“But you know what?” she said. “Even that’s not what you’re really afraid of. Not really.”
He looked at her, reluctant to respond, unsure of what was coming next.
“What you’re really afraid of,” she said, reaching over and laying the backs of her fingers across his cheek, “is that you’ll get attached to me.”
She might have been missing some other things, but she was surely right about that. And the only thing that kept him from saying fuck it all and taking her in his arms then and there was the thought of the business he would be taking care of the next night. He was here for a job. It was crazy to get involved in any other way. He wouldn’t let it happen.
• • •
Chantrea left for class at eight the next morning. Dox immediately checked the secure site. There was a message waiting from Gant: Rubie’s, corner of streets 19 and 240, noon. He checked it out online and saw it was some kind of wine bar. He already knew the neighborhood—a collection of relatively swank houses and upmarket boutiques—from previous reconnaissance. He didn’t have a problem with it, preferring a public place for a meeting like this one.
On impulse, he Googled Rithisak Sorm. No Wikipedia page, but there were a number of news articles about arrest warrants and Uncle Sam pressuring the Cambodian government to extradite him for trafficking. The Cambodians claimed Sorm wasn’t even in Cambodia, he was beyond their reach. More likely, he was being tipped off and protected. Regardless, what was available supported Gant’s story. There were no photos of Sorm—apparently, Khmer Rouge record-keeping wasn’t quite as squared-away as the Nazis’ had been—but Dox was satisfied with what he’d found.
He showered, dressed in unobtrusive tourist attire, and headed over to the hotel restaurant to fuel up. The staff had long since come to recognize him, and the hostess, the guy making the omelets, and the waitress pouring his coffee all greeted him with a delightful sampeah and a cheerfully accented, “Good morning, Mr. Dox.” He liked the sampeah, which was similar to the Balinese sembah that had become second nature to him on his adopted island. There was something so friendly about greeting someone by pressing your palms together, fingers up, at chin level. The sembah and sampeah and the Thai wai and the Indian namaste; the Chinese and Japanese bow; the western handshake…. it was funny how, all over the world, the original function of a salutation was to show the other person you weren’t holding something dangerous. Politeness determined by the eschewal of a weapon. Peace as the absence of war.
He killed nearly an hour with four trips to the lavish buffet: steamed crabs from Kep; star fruit from Indonesia; a profusion of baguettes and croissants and cheeses, the happier legacies of the French occupation. Whil
e he ate, he saw the hostess and a hotel manager seating several foreigners at a large circular table in the center of the restaurant. They were dressed in local business casual: creased pants and pressed shirts, no jackets, no ties. He watched handshakes and business cards exchange; heard English greetings in various accents. German, French, something Scandinavian he couldn’t place more precisely. NGOs, he guessed—nongovernmental organizations, in town to save the country from who knows what. Maybe they were even part of the UN meeting Gant had mentioned.
A few minutes later, two fit-looking Khmer guys in identical gray slacks, white button-down shirts, and practical-looking black shoes entered the room. They spoke briefly with the manager, who nodded deferentially and then stepped away. Dox noted both guys were wearing earpieces. Obviously security of some sort. They’d scan the room next, and Dox tucked into the last of his star fruit, feeling nothing—no worry, no hostility, no exceptional alertness, just a relaxed, comfortable, quiet oneness with his surroundings. He felt himself just as much part of the room as the tables and chairs, and would be equally unremarkable to the bodyguards, whoever they were.
After a few moments, he stretched and glanced around again. The bodyguards had taken up positions alongside the entrance. A Khmer man in a navy suit had just come in—full head of luxurious gray hair, erect posture, a relaxed and confident stride. A younger Khmer guy, also in a suit but not as well fitted, followed close and deferentially behind him. The manager greeted the older guy with a notably humble sampeah, his pressed palms high and his head low, then ushered the two to the table with the foreigners, all of whom stood at their approach. There were handshakes all around and more greetings in English. The older guy took a moment to introduce his younger companion, who seemed ill at ease, perhaps at the presence of so many foreign VIPs.
Dox glanced at the bodyguards. Their postures were alert, but not unduly so: clearly, they’d satisfied themselves that the room was secure. If they were basing that conclusion on no more than a visual scan, their principal must have been of some importance, but not, say, a president or foreign minister, who would have prompted an advance team of explosives experts and bomb-sniffing dogs and a retinue larger than just two. Still, whoever he was, he was somebody with some clout—his carriage, the deference with which the manager had greeted him, the presence of the flunky, the way the foreigners had stood at his approach. He was talking to them now, and though Dox couldn’t make out the words, the Khmer had the poise of a gracious host. For some reason, he reminded Dox of the Dalai Lama—the hair and the suit were wrong, of course, and this guy wasn’t quite that old, but he had the same air of compassion, confidence, and, what… gratitude? Yes, a kind of pleased gratitude, nothing servile about it. And an appealing twinkle of humor in his eyes, too, which did nothing to diminish his aura of gravitas.
Dox finished his breakfast and made his way to the door, offering a sampeah and a smile to each member of the staff he passed. Though he couldn’t hear their conversation, the Khmer seemed to be holding a kind of genial court among the foreigners. Dox paid them all only the barest moment of casual attention, which was no more than the bodyguards paid him as he passed their position and headed out into the bright Phnom Penh morning.
The sun was midway to its apogee but it wasn’t excessively hot yet, so he decided to walk to Rubie’s. Easier to check for followers walking than it was from the back of a tuk-tuk, anyway. He crossed the street and strolled past the imposing iron and concrete walls surrounding the American Embassy. It was odd to behold such a fortress of officialdom on his way to such an unofficial meeting. The bars and walls and guard posts all seemed to declare his status as unacknowledged, unaffiliated, unwanted. And yet here he was, on his way to do their dirty work. Well, no one ever said the world had to make sense.
He skirted the green oasis of Wat Phnom, its massive concrete spire bleached white against a clear blue sky. A dozen kids were roughhousing on the grass as he passed, young mothers chatting on park benches nearby. The lucky ones, he thought, with mothers who watched out for them. A few geezers moved with arthritic care through a series of tai chi exercises, younger men in short-sleeved white shirts and dark ties striding obliviously past them, likely on their way to meetings or some other business in the area. Just ordinary people trying to make their ordinary way in life, and yet hidden in their collective midst was something so misshapen it could turn thirty-thousand children into sex slaves. He felt a warm satisfaction at the thought of killing Sorm and immediately pushed it away. A job was a job. Beyond knowing the target was legitimate, he didn’t want to feel one way or the other about it.
He turned south, parallel to the waterfront, naturally noting the high spots in the surrounding buildings that would make the best sniper hides along the way. The bars were all closed at this hour, and partially obscured by stalls selling tee shirts and assorted bric-a-brac. In contrast to the lively, tawdry night scene, in the harsh light of day it all just looked tired, and poor, and sad. He passed a store selling ornately carved wooden coffins, and wondered whether it was a good omen or a bad one, under the circumstances. Well, he’d know soon enough.
He zigzagged southwest, checking his back along the way. He didn’t think he’d been followed from the hotel, but it was hard to be sure here, it was too chaotic. The streets were choked with shifting knots of shoppers crowding under the shadow of stall umbrellas so jam-packed they formed a kind of tent city encroaching to nearly the center of the street. A low cacophony enveloped him as he walked: tuk-tuk drivers honking their horns; scooters buzzing through cracks in the mass of pedestrians; shouts and cries and laughter. Overhead, power lines stretched haphazardly from building to building like baling wire strung by a blind man. On all sides, people haggled over everything imaginable: shirts and shoes and underwear; quartered chickens and beef and fresh fish on ice; all manner of refurbished electronics. The air was redolent of diesel and the unforgettable rotting-sewage smell of durian fruit. He loved all of it.
Presently the riotous street scene began to ebb, and he arrived at the more genteel environs of Rubie’s. The bar, he saw, occupied the ground floor of a white two-storied corner building. On both sides were patios and French doors, all surrounded by tall potted plants such that passers-by could catch only a glimpse of the interior. Dox circled it several times from different angles and directions, checking for surveillance along the way. Nothing struck him as out of place and he headed inside.
A young Khmer guy stood from behind the long bar as Dox entered, offering a smile and a sampeah. Dox returned the greeting and looked around. The place was empty, but had the feel of soon-to-be-bustling rather than currently dead. Just one long room and an alcove with couches in back, the walls, ceiling and floor all comprised of comfortably worn wood. A slight breeze descended from the slowly turning ceiling fans, and sun seeping through the open French doors offered the only light. Behind the bar was a modest stereo system, softly playing what sounded like Khmer pop, and an equally modest though serviceable selection of booze. It was a little early for the kind of libation Gant claimed Khmers couldn’t make, though; plus he didn’t want to dull the edge while he was operational. So he took the last stool at the bar, with a view of all the doors, theatrically mopped his sweaty brow, and ordered a tonic water with a slice of lemon. The bartender gave him his drink and they made pidgin small talk for a few minutes. Then the bartender returned to his seat and picked up a Khmer magazine, apparently what he’d been reading when Dox had entered. Dox sipped his drink and settled in to wait.
True to form, Gant strolled in at noon sharp, carrying a green canvas duffle bag. A few western tourists had since taken up residence on the couches in the alcove, but otherwise they had the place to themselves. Gant set down the bag against the bar alongside Dox and took a stool two over. The bartender stood—too late, Dox noted, to have noticed the bag. Gant ordered a Bombay Sapphire martini, then produced a handkerchief from his pants pocket and dabbed his brow.
“Heard they didn’t
make proper martinis in these parts,” Dox said, with the air of someone making casual conversation with a fellow out-of-towner.
Gant considered the hankie for a moment and smiled sardonically. “We live in hope.”
Dox nodded. “That we do.” He waited until the bartender was distracted by his labors, then stood, placed a few one-dollar bills on the table, and exited with the bag.
He ran a route to make sure he was still clean, then caught a tuk-tuk to a place called Little Bikes just north of the National Museum, where he rented a Honda CB400 and a full-face helmet. They tried to get him to take the bike for a week, but he told them no need, twenty-four hours ought to be just fine. He set the duffle bag across his lap and headed north, swinging around in the opposite direction when he was out of sight of the bike shop.
In no time he was cruising along a deserted stretch of Tompum Lake on the outskirts of the city, an area he’d previously reconnoitered for this very purpose. The roads went from paved to gravel to dirt, the houses from concrete to corrugated to tar paper. Christ, these people were poor. He wondered why it was bothering him—it wasn’t like he didn’t see plenty of the same in Bali. Chantrea, he supposed. Her story about her family’s hardships was making it more personal for him. He was annoyed with himself for the reaction—he didn’t want to be distracted. And anyway, maybe she was just shining him on about all that, he couldn’t really know. But shit, what was he going to do, pretend the hardship around him wasn’t so bad because maybe Chantrea was exaggerating about her own? Sometimes you had to act as if something was real, even if it might not be.
He shook it off and kept going. When he was satisfied he was sufficiently far from even the squatter’s shacks, he pulled over, killed the engine, and wandered down into the weeds at the edge of the shallow lake. The bike had kicked up a long line of dust in the airless heat, and he waited patiently until it had dissipated and there was no remaining sign of his passage.