Phnom Penh Express

by Johan Smits

  What Billy doesn’t yet know is how well they have themselves established in Cambodia. Given the fact that they’re just about to open that chocolate shop surely to front for their stone tinkering, they can’t be that deeply rooted yet. One more reason to find out what’s happening behind the closed doors of that house, Billy rationalises. Then once he has enough hard evidence, he’ll be in a position to reveal the secret glory of WATT to his superiors. Confronted with such outstanding covert activity, they won’t have any choice other than approve Billy’s call for action and launch the field operative plan that he will have worked out to the finest detail by then.

  At that moment, someone knocks at his door.

  “Yeah,” Billy yells, “come in.”

  A young Cambodian in an almost half-decent suit enters and addresses Billy politely.

  “A package for your office, sir,” handing him a small cardboard box.

  Billy signs it off and the young man disappears. He opens the box and gingerly slides out the bugging equipment he ordered earlier. It’s a small rectangular device that fits in the palm of his hand, called a GSM3000D. They always come up with the catchiest names for this high-tech spy shit, Billy thinks, still it sounds cool and 24-ish. As Billy cannot yet afford to involve any Bureau operatives, he’s got to go this one alone. Most listening devices have a transmitting range of not much further than a kilometre or so, and the embassy is just too far away from the chocolate shop to be in range. Billy must find a suitable location that allows him to listen in from a distance, as he can’t afford to spend hours sitting in a van parked nearby Street 240. He simply has to insert a regular mobile phone SIM card in the GSM3000D and then dial the number from any place he likes, in order to hear exactly what’s going on in hypersensitive digital audio.

  He regards the device in his hand pensively. He now has to find a way of breaking into that house and installing it.

  Chapter TWENTY

  PHIRUN WAKES FROM his daydream. After breakfast with Merrilee, she’s been hogging his mind constantly. He still can’t figure her out; what strange creatures women are, blowing hot and cold. First she says she doesn’t want a relationship. Then she agrees to meet for lunch and provokes him with her playful dirty talk. Then she leaves him standing in the cold after ridiculing his poem. The next morning she invites him for breakfast and gives him a poem of her own! What the hell...? he thinks. Or was she mocking him again? Giving him a blank piece of paper with a hole in it? What was that supposed to mean? On the other hand she had sounded so sincere. Hold it in front of whatever makes your heart feel warm, she’d said. Poetry is all around us. You can recognise a brilliant diamond in almost anything. I like that, Phirun admits.

  He returns his attention to his work. He’s been producing chocolate truffles nonstop for the past three hours and now it’s time for some fun of the happy chocolate variety. Nina wouldn’t approve, obviously, but she doesn’t need to know, and besides he deserves a bit of distraction from his love-struck confusion. Especially now that his buddy has armed him with a wide variety of new and different substances to try out.

  He studies the assortment, making sure to read the small prints on the often tiny labels, trying to familiarise himself with all the funny sounding names. A small bag of weed; several E’s; some angel dust; a little vial of Georgia Home Boy; another one of White Lightning and its big brother, super acid; a small bag of rock candy; a couple of grams of crack; a few peace pills and some brightly coloured, home produced yaba. The new vocabulary adds splashes of illicit colour to his secret venture. It’s true, he thinks, poetry is all around us.

  His first happy chocolate experience nine days ago had produced some mixed results, but then Nina wasn’t supposed to walk in. Whatever, he thinks, sure that this time he won’t be disturbed — Nina is out of town today; he’s got the entire chocolate house to himself.

  He picks up a reddish-orange yaba pill and puts it between his thumb and forefinger, examining it closely as if it were a precious stone.

  “Beautiful...,” he mumbles. “I’m going to transform you into something else, my tiny friend. What are you going to be, a chocolate praline or a truffle?”

  Phirun is agitated. Like any number of creative, innovative artists, he suddenly feels excited by the prospect that he alone will be responsible for what is going to be conjured into existence. He feels his heartbeat accelerate — yaba truffles, crack pralines, speed chocolate bars, super acid ice cream!

  “Not unlike a revered alchemist,” he mumbles, “turning stone into gold.”

  At the back of the room, a little portable stereo is blasting out music.

  “... Old Mac Donald had a farm, EE AI EE AI OO...”

  Phirun recognises the tune. He walks over and turns up the volume.

  “...and on his farm he had some chicks, EE AI EE AI OO...”

  He stands still and holds up his index finger. Then he instantly forgets what he was about to say and starts singing along.

  “With a chick chick here and a chick chick there,

  Here a chick, there a chick, ev’rywhere a chick chick...”

  By now Merrilee and her mysteries have departed his thoughts; Phirun is intensely concentrated on what he’s doing. He throws a few of the yaba pills into a heavy stone mortar and starts crushing them. What chocolate shall he use, he wonders, the dark, the milk or the white? I’ll make truffles, he decides. Dark ones, of course.

  The melting machine is buzzing and a chocolatey aroma starts hugging the air. Phirun looks at the vial of White Lightning. LSD and yaba? Yes, yes, why not? Blending is beautiful — just like with a good whisky.

  His mind is running at a thousand miles an hour, excited by the endless possibilities lining up. Smack and crack in dark; weed and peace in milk.

  “EE AI EE AI OO...”

  He stops the melting machine and scoops the dark liquid into a stainless steel bowl. He takes a carton of fresh cream from the fridge and slices off a sliver of premium butter. He doesn’t need to measure; he’s done this countless times before. He adeptly whips the butter and cream into the chocolate.

  “Beautiful...,” he whispers. “You’ll be my beautiful darlings...”

  Phirun moves the heavy stone mortar next to the steel bowl containing the chocolate mixture. With a tablespoon he carefully scoops out yaba powder and dangles it invitingly above the bowl.

  “Yaba...”

  The powder falls into the bowl and is quickly absorbed by the chocolate.

  “Daba...”

  Then he opens the vial of White Lightning and sprinkles the liquid over the chocolate mixture.

  “Doo!”

  Chapter TWENTY ONE

  BILLY PUTS DOWN his fork, chewing pensively on half a merguez sausage. Occasionally a light night breeze swooshes through the large, potted plants adorning the restaurant’s rooftop terrace. The rustling leaves and amorous whisperings of a young couple three tables away, are the only sounds breaking the silence. But Billy can’t enjoy his dinner because he’s so nervous. He’s wearing grey sneakers, dark tracksuit pants and a black, long-sleeve shirt. Not exactly the most elegant outfit, he realises — but then, he’s going on a secret mission, not a dinner date.

  That afternoon, he had made a short reconnaissance excursion to Street 240. It hadn’t taken long to see that it wouldn’t be easy breaking into that chocolate house. First, there was a solid pair of large, wooden front doors. Even if he could pry them open, he’d have to get through a second set of doors, made out of glass. Chances were, they too would be locked. Moreover, he’d be too exposed from the street side. As for the windows, they not only had shutters but were also iron barred. To top it off, Billy had later noticed a night guard arrive on bicycle. He would undoubtedly be staying inside the house — probably asleep, but still...

  He watches a couple ordering dessert. They are the only other customers left and would probably leave quite soon, Billy speculates. He touches his pocket and feels the little, rectangular bulge of the GSM3000D li
stening device. Reassured, he finishes his couscous while trying to think of a suitable name for tonight’s mission. He decides on ‘Calling Charlie’, like back in Nam. Billy never fought in Vietnam, he was too young for that, but he almost feels like he did, considering the number of war movies he’s watched over and over again. ‘Charlie this’, and ‘Charlie that’, and ‘let’s get Charlie’... He likes the sound of it all.

  By the end of his afternoon excursion, Billy had finally found a solution to accessing the chocolate house. The Tamar Hindi restaurant was only two doors away and he’d gone up all the way to its rooftop terrace where he’s sitting right now. He’d ordered coffee and had noticed how, from the terrace, he could easily access the adjacent roof, belonging to some boutique, Couleurs d’Afrique. And from there he could finally climb onto Charlie’s roof. Billy had spotted a window in the roof; a potential entry point. It didn’t have all those metal bars. But it had seemed too exposed to the street, making a break-in risky, even at night. Billy had then finally decided he would still enter the house through the roof, but on the other side. Charlie’s roof was covered with tiles, so it shouldn’t be too difficult to remove some and bust a Billy-sized hole.

  Billy finishes eating. To his chagrin, he had not been able to enjoy a bottle of red with his meal — he self-imposes a drinking ban while he’s in the field. He had returned to The Tamar Hindi over an hour ago and is now watching the boy lead his girlfriend down the stairs as the waitress starts clearing their table.

  Billy pours himself more mint tea and patiently waits for the right moment. When, finally, the waitress leaves, Billy jumps quickly up. He tosses enough money on the table to cover his bill with a generous tip, then shoots towards the back. There’s plenty of space to hide behind the earthenware pots of huge, tropical plants. When the waitress returns she should naturally assume that he has left. Then all Billy would have to do is wait for the restaurant to close.

  ***

  It’s two thirty in the morning when Billy finally emerges from his hiding place. He had wanted to make absolutely sure that the restaurant would be deserted. He stretches his legs painfully and starts with a five-minute warm-up. All those years of desk jockeying haven’t done his physical condition any favours at all; if only he had made it as a Special Agent. He takes a few deep breaths and cracks his fingers. Phase two of operation ‘Calling Charlie’ is about to commence.

  Tonight’s moon is half-full (Billy is an optimist) and he wonders what would be best. The brighter the moon, the more visible he’d be; the darker the moon, the more difficult it would be to crawl over rooftops. He walks carefully to the far end of the terrace and quietly climbs over the low wall. Crossing the neighbour’s roof turns out to be easy, and with each step that Senior Intelligence Officer William H. Stoppkotte takes, his confidence grows. He moves very cautiously, shifting his weight from one foot to the other while keeping his balance under control — and by the time he arrives at the other end of the Couleurs d’Afrique boutique, he considers himself on a par with TV’s Agent Bauer.

  Then something unexpected happens. Billy has to pee.

  “Damn it!” he curses in a muffled voice, but he can’t help it, nature’s call is very insistent. Must be all that goddamn mint tea, he thinks, and he frantically tries to find a solution for his urgent logistical problem. Billy presses himself into the moonlight’s shadow at the edge of the chocolate house’s wall and looks around to make sure he isn’t in anybody’s field of vision. His position on the roof’s sloping surface isn’t ideal but he manages to open his fly and starts urinating. The relief it brings is instantaneous. While he’s moving himself back into combat position, Billy starts hearing a low but regular beat; a ticking sound. It’s the sound of liquid obeying the law of gravity. Then almost immediately he hears a man shouting in Khmer:

  “Choi mai!”

  Billy’s Khmer linguistic abilities are severely limited but still good enough to recognise the word ‘motherfucker’. Damn it, he thinks, and quietly moves himself back into the shadow.

  “You little fuck!” he hears the man shout in Khmer, followed by the hysterical laughter of a few woken up motodop witnesses. Billy doesn’t need to master Khmer in order to figure out what the furious man on the street is yelling towards the invisible bastard who just pissed all over him. What would Jack Bauer do now? Billy decides to stay still until the storm passes.

  Half an hour later, after making sure it’s absolutely quiet, Billy continues with his ever-more delicate mission. The most challenging part still has to come, he knows. The self-proclaimed WATT Commander carefully pulls himself onto his target’s roof, which is even more sloped than the previous one. It takes him a good thirty minutes before he secures a reasonably stable position from where he can try and make a hole in the roof through which he could enter.

  One by one, he starts to remove the heavy stone tiles; presently, Billy is soaked in sweat. After twenty minutes, he evaluates the result of his endeavours. The opening he has created is large enough to grant him entry into Charlie’s headquarters and with renewed determination Billy continues with his nocturnal break-and-enter. He slowly lowers himself into the dark hole until he feels his feet touching solid floor. So far so good, so far so good, Billy thinks, trying to keep his nerves in check.

  It takes him a couple of minutes before his eyes adjust to the interior darkness. Then Billy starts to move slowly. He can make out the faint contours of a sofa, a closet, a low coffee table, some chairs... Damn! Someone must be living in here, he realises. He thought the entire building was dedicated to making chocolate — the ground floor to production and sales, and first floor to stock or something — but that’s clearly not the case. How could he have missed this? Billy slowly opens a door that he hopes will reveal stairs leading to the ground floor. Nothing. He enters what seems to be an artist’s atelier. Strange sculptures and bizarre objects are scattered all over the room. He tiptoes past an abstract painting on an easel.

  “Goddamn rubbish,” he whispers to himself.

  As far as art is concerned, Billy has always fallen on the conservative side. The closest he has ever been to buying a work of art was when some guy in New York tried to sell him a one-metre-tall Statue of Liberty replica, cast out of red, white and blue candy. But he didn’t buy it in the end, for fear that it might be anti-patriotic to lick the Liberty Lady. That was shortly after 9/11 and Billy hadn’t risked it, no matter how much of a sweet tooth he has.

  Billy takes a deep breath and continues with his search for the staircase. He can’t find it. Goddamn architect, he thinks while pushing open a pair of low saloon doors. He expected to find a kitchen but — just in time — he notices the void in front of him: the staircase.

  “Finally,” Billy sighs with relief and praises himself lucky — he could have easily missed it and fallen all the way down. That surely would have torpedoed his mission instantly.

  He slowly descends the stairs, striving not to make any noise. There’s still a guard somewhere to be reckoned with. When Billy finally enters the production area he touches the GSM3000D in his pocket to reassure himself it’s still there.

  Moments later he finds himself in the middle of the room. He smells the aroma of dried cocoa still clinging to the insides of the two melting machines, and through the darkness he manages to recognise several wide racks lining the entire length of the wall opposite. They’re hoarding hundreds of plastic moulds. For a second Billy forgets himself, fascinated by the sights and smells. Momentarily, the aroma of the chocolate transports him back to his childhood. Then he quickly pulls himself together. This ain’t no trip down memory lane, he thinks, I’m in the middle of a goddamn field operation!

  Billy starts looking for an appropriate spot to plant the bugging device. It should be somewhere central, to cover an area as wide as possible. When he looks up he’s staring straight at one of the large, metal lamps hanging from the ceiling. Perfect, he thinks. If I attach the device there, nobody will be able to detect it from down
here. And absolutely no chance a cleaner would bother dusting up there.

  It doesn’t take Billy much time to mount the steel work table, affix the GSM3000D onto one of the lampshades, activate the device and climb down again. Finally, the mission is running smoothly, he thinks, looking at his watch. He’s doing well for time. He turns, steps towards the staircase and abruptly trips over the guard sleeping on a thin mattress on the floor. Billy lands painfully on the hard mosaic tiles while also knocking over a chair and a plastic bucket — left behind by the cleaner — dousing the night guard with water. The chair falls into one of the racks and a split-second later hundreds of plastic moulds come tumbling down with a loud clatter.

  The wet guard, a slender Khmer man in his late sixties, shakes his head like a dog in the rain, stands up and fumbles for the light switch. The moment the room is bathed in light, Billy’s cellphone goes off.

  “Goddammit!” he curses, getting up and, in his panic, pressing the answer button while the wet guard regards him in disbelief.

  “Hellooooo?” a tinny girl’s voice emits from Billy’s cell. On top of everything, the speaker is switched on.

  For a few moments the night guard and Billy face off, staring at each other while the crackling voice floods the room. Then the guard points at Billy’s mobile.

  “Tooresap,” he says, the Khmer word for telephone.

  Bewildered, Billy looks at the phone in his hand and, as if in a dream, holds it up to his ear.