by Tom Vater
The Cambodian Air Travel flight began to shake like a dying bird and Maier could not help but overhear one of the passengers in the seats behind him, a dour but voluptuous Austrian woman. What was he thinking?
“Gerhard, are we crashing? Will we die, Gerhard?”
Maier was just able to spot a few skinny cows grazing peacefully on the edge of the runway. Then they were down.
Welcome to Cambodia.
THE PEARL OF ASIA
“Vodka orange, please.”
The Foreign Correspondents Club, the FCC, was Maier’s first port of call in Phnom Penh. As the sun set, Maier sat on the front terrace on the first floor of the handsome French colonial-era corner building and watched the action along Sisowath Quay, the wide road that ran along the banks of the Tonlé Sap River. Since his last visit three years earlier, things had changed. Some of the roads in town had been resurfaced and in the daytime, the city was safe. Amnesties and disarmament programs run by the government and international aid organisations had wrestled the guns from the hands of the kids.
Sisowath Quay woke up in the late afternoon and made a half-hearted attempt to resurrect the flair of the Fifties, when the Cambodian capital had been known as the Pearl of the East. Half the establishments along the river road were called something like L’Indochine, Pastis was served on the sidewalks and the cute young waitresses in their figure-hugging uniforms had learned to say bonjour. The bistros, bars and restaurants did brisk business with the tourists who had, looking for temples, somehow got lost and ended up in the city. A few galleries had opened, offering huge and garish oil paintings of Angkor Wat to less discerning visitors. Too loud for the waiting room at Mrs Müller-Overbeck’s dentist back in Blankenese, but just right for the current batch of visitors.
And the anarchy of the recent past remained visible. Small groups of cripples, most of them men, victims of a few of the millions of landmines that had been buried across the country, waiting to blow someone’s, anyone’s foot off, were gathering on the footpaths. Those with crutches limped up and down the broken pavement, carrying hawkers’ trays filled with photocopied books about genocide, torture and the terrible human cost of landmines.
“Only two dollar” was the call that followed tourists brave enough to walk as night fell. Most of the unfortunates merely followed the wealthy visitors with their dead eyes, tried to sell drugs or simply begged for something, anything to get them through the night. To survive in this country could be called fortunate – or not. Those who no longer had eyes were guided in mad circles by orphaned children as they played sad songs on the srang, a small, lamenting fiddle whose body was tied off with the skin of a cobra. Emaciated, dried-up cyclo drivers moved their pedal-powered rickshaws along the quay in slow motion as if in funeral processions, while the motorised transport rolled like a dirty wave around them. Thousands of small mopeds, driven by motodops, provided the only public transport. Toyotas smuggled in from Thailand, with the steering wheel on the wrong side – you drove on the right in Cambodia, on the left in neighbouring Thailand and any which way you preferred on Sisowath Quay after dark – or huge four-wheel-drives that had, for the most part, originated with the many NGOs in town – now driven by heavily armed young thugs, the children of the corrupt upper classes, of government cronies and the upper echelons of the military – rarely displayed number plates. Some of the drivers were too young to look above the steering wheel. The countless bars on the side streets branching off from the river were filled with young women in tight clothes. For a few dollars you could take any one of them back to your hotel.
Directly above the steep banks of the river, the municipal authorities had built a wide promenade where the inhabitants of Cambodia’s capital could enjoy the fresh breeze while the tourists could get excited about photographing the resident elephant. The US dollar was still the main currency in circulation, if the price list on the FCC’s was anything to go by. The riel, the country’s currency, wasn’t worth much. Only the poor used it.
Maier found himself getting depressed. Here on Sisowath Quay, as the sun sunk into the slow moving, broad river, dotted with small fishing barges, a shoot-out before dinner was wholly imaginable, just as it had been four years earlier. Some change.
“Hey, Maier, long time no see, mate. You’re missing the boom.”
Carissa Stevenson had once been the best and most attractive foreign journalist in Phnom Penh. After UNTAC had packed up its tanks, the media types had left and the country had slipped from the international front pages, Carissa had stayed on. She had stayed, after Hort had died and Maier had said goodbye to his old life. Now, as he got up and put his arms around his former colleague and sometime partner, he noticed that the four years in the sun of a country the world had forgotten had given her a positively golden bloom. Carissa radiated life force.
“Hey, Carissa, you look great, better than anyone I’ve seen lately. The heroin must be getting better in these parts.”
“Well, it’s getting cheaper all the time, Maier.”
The woman from Nelson, New Zealand broke into a slightly lop-sided and gorgeous smile. Rings around her fingers and bags under her dark eyes, lined with kohl. Dressed all in red. The skirt was tight and short. The long frizzled hair was white.
White!
Maier remembered Carissa as ash blonde.
“I don’t suppose you’ve come to Phnom Penh for a holiday? And you’re not here for me either. And there’s no big story to be scooped. Apart from the daily rapes and murders, rampaging elephants and the occasional drug overdose by some third-tier member of the European aristocracy, it’s pretty quiet. The good old and wild times, when Cambodia could shock the world are long gone. Hollywood’s coming in the shape of Angelina Jolie soon. I don’t suppose you have become a reporter for the stars? So what are you doing here?”
“I haven’t worked as a journo for years, Carissa. I’m a private detective now. And I’m here on business.”
Carissa laughed drily and, with a languid, studied gesture, waved for service. The waiter, at the far end of the teak top bar, nodded. It was as it had always been. Everyone knew what Carissa wanted. For a moment Maier remembered the exciting weeks in Phnom Penh – nights on the terrace of her colonial-era villa, crushed by sex, amphetamines, alcohol and marijuana, as gunfire rattled through the darkness around them. Life had been uncomplicated then. You just had to react to whatever had been going on.
The trips up-country were just as vivid in his memory. He’d often travelled with soldiers loyal to Hun Sen, the country’s new leader, a young and ruthless ex-Khmer Rouge who had gone over to the Vietnamese, had helped liberate the country from the madness of stone-age communism and had since reigned with a single eye and an iron fist, most recently in the name of democracy. The soldiers had gone out to hunt Khmer Rouge. Looking danger in the eye had become habitual, like smoking, and had given Maier the illusion of eternal life. Somehow he’d lost that later. On the day the bomb with his name on it had killed Hort, it had disappeared altogether. Now, as he looked at his old partner, he could see his past in her familiar, so-familiar, face clearly.
“I don’t fucking believe it. A private detective? I’ll call you Holmes from now on.”
“There are better private detectives.”
He gave her his card.
“Marlowe is probably more appropriate.”
Carissa expelled a short, mocking laugh. She had lost none of her charm, or cynicism. She smelled good too. She leaned dangerously close to Maier and for a second he turned his eyes away from the street and fell into hers, like a fever.
“And how can I be of assistance to solve the great detective’s case?” she whispered with the broadest Kiwi accent he’d heard in years.
“I am not sure I can let you in on the confidential aspects of this case,” he replied just as softly.
Carissa pulled a face and began to search through her handbag, until she’d found a half-smoked joint.
“You won’t convince me with t
hat. Is Cambodia the only country left in the world where smoking weed is still legal?”
“No longer, at least not on paper. The Americans put the heat on and Cambodia has passed the relevant laws. But what does that mean here? There are three restaurants in town that have happy pizza on their menu. One slice is enough to take you straight back to the good old UNTAC days. You can even choose, appropriately for the consumer age – happy, very happy and extremely happy. I’ve just covered it for High Times.”
“Shame, that’s not why I came back. But it’s great to see you.”
Carissa looked at him impatiently and passed the joint.
“So tell me what brought you back to Phnom Penh. I’ll promise not to publish a word without your permission.”
“I am looking for a young man who runs a scuba diving business in Kep. You know, the beach place near the Vietnamese border.”
“Yeah, I fucking know the place. We had sex in an old ruined church there once, remember? A pigeon shat on your arse.”
Maier did remember.
“There’s only one dive place. It can only be Rolf or Pete. Rolf’s German, Pete’s a Brit. The outfit is called Pirate Divers or something original like that. Pete’s in town at the moment. Those two aren’t hard to find.”
Maier took a quick drag and passed the joint back to the journalist.
“Well, if Pete is here already, I would like to meet him. Where does he go at night?”
“The English guy? But your case surely has to be about the German? Has he done anything wrong? I hope he’s not a child molester, but I suppose he wouldn’t have slept with an old lady like me if he went for the young ones.”
“As far as I know, he is nothing of the sort. But I don’t know much and that’s why I am here.”
“Is there a warrant out for him in Germany?”
“No. How long have you known Rolf Müller-Overbeck?”
Carissa grinned with only a modicum of embarrassment.
“Don’t sound so formal, Maier. I picked Rolf up in the Heart of Darkness bar. On his first night in town. That was six months ago, in April, around New Year. You know, when everyone throws water and talc at each other and everyone gets wet. Rolf’s the kind of guy who’s straight in there, no hesitation. He poured a bucket of ice water over my head and I took my revenge. The Heart of Darkness is a pick-up joint.”
“How did he seem to you?”
Carissa laughed, “Quite flexible for a bloke, especially for a German. Spontaneous, friendly and naïve – as far as Asia’s concerned. He hadn’t caught yellow fever yet. Then I was down in Kep in May to celebrate my birthday. I saw Rolf again that night and he still hadn’t been infected. But that has, as far as I know, changed now. What do you want from him?”
“Confidential. But as far as I know, he has not committed a crime. Yellow fever?”
“Oh, you know, the unhealthy fixation on Cambodian women so many male foreigners acquire here. They think that Cambodian girls are the most beautiful females in the world, which has a lot to do with the fact that they don’t talk back. As long as the money keeps rolling in. Once the boys become infected, I’m out of the race, completely. Naturally. I talk back.”
“And the English guy?”
“…is kind of a smooth operator, a wide-boy as they’d say where he comes from. But the dive business seems to be going good since Rolf got in as a partner. He invested and manages to get German customers via their website. The dive industry’s in its infancy here. Those two are real pioneers.”
Maier was suddenly exhausted. The long flight and the short joint, the unfamiliar heat and the city air, saturated with petrol fumes, the anarchy on the street, and on top, his old lover (he liked to keep the word girlfriend locked up deep inside); it was simply great to be back in Cambodia and float in clouds of nostalgia. This case would be more fun than Mrs Müller-Overbeck had had in her entire life.
Carissa raised her glass. “So, Mr Private Detective, if you don’t come home with me tonight, I’ll do everything in my power to make your case more complicated.”
INTO THE HEART OF DARKNESS
By 9 o’clock, the city burnt out. For a few short hours the daily struggle for survival of almost all the city’s inhabitants ground to a halt. As soon as the sun disappeared into the Tonlé Sap River, the shops closed and the pedestrians got off the river promenade. The opposite side of the slow-moving water had already fallen into silent, mosquito-sodden darkness. Perhaps the river was not to be trusted: after all it changed direction twice a year. Yes, Cambodia was a special place.
Even the one-legged entrepreneurs slowly faded from the sidewalks and soon only hardened motodops – pushing ketamine, brown sugar and girls, all at the same time if desired – cruised up and down Sisowath Quay. Homeless families, perhaps just in from the countryside looking for jobs in the construction industry, were camped in front of closing restaurants. These people had to share the concrete floor with cockroaches and rats, for as long as it took to find employment and a roof over their heads.
Maier sat on the back of Carissa’s 250cc Yamaha dirt bike. The Kiwi journalist drove like the devil down Street 154 and didn’t hesitate to take a cop’s right of way on Norodom Boulevard.
“If you drive too slowly at night, you still get harassed by kids with guns.”
Phnom Penh remained a wonderful, frightening backwater. If the Cambodian capital had been safer, investors would have built a sea of chrome-and-glass monstrosities. But there were enough buildings from the French colonial days and the optimistic post-independence era of the Fifties left standing to get a feeling for the city’s history, even at sixty miles an hour.
The Khmer Rouge had laid siege to and finally taken Phnom Penh in April 1975. In the following weeks, the victorious revolutionaries emptied the city of its people. The entire population was driven into the countryside onto collectives to work as rice farmers. The stone-age communists were trying to stop US imperialism in particular, and the entire capitalist system in general, in its tracks. Overnight, schools, post offices, banks and telephone exchanges were made obsolete. Money no longer existed. The Pearl of Asia became a ghost town. For three years and eight months, the city stood empty. Only S21, a school turned prison camp, showed any sign of activity. Here, more than seventeen thousand people were interrogated and tortured, before being taken to the Choeung Ek, farmland fifteen kilometres outside the city, where they were beaten to death with sticks and thrown into shallow graves. The Khmer Rouge kept just a few government ministries open and a handful of friendly countries including China, Cuba and Yugoslavia continued to maintain embassies. Apart from a handful of flights to Beijing every week, Cambodia was virtually cut off from the rest of the world. As a nation amongst nations, it ceased to exist.
The forced exodus of the Seventies and the lack of investment in subsequent decades saved the city’s character from demolition. As neighbouring Bangkok grew into a Bladerunner-like cityscape, Phnom Penh remained provincial, because much of Cambodia’s urban population had been butchered in the Killing Fields and many of the capital’s current inhabitants were really landless farmers who’d drifted into town since the end of the war in search of work.
The side streets were deserted. After dark, dogs, cats and rats, all about the same size, ruled the garbage dumps, which spread across almost every street corner. Here and there, fairy lights glimmered in the darkness, beacons of hope and all its opposites to guide the night people towards countless massage brothels which could be found in the small alleys off the main strips. The red light was Phnom Penh’s only vital sign at night. The best party going was at the Heart, as the motodops called the city’s most popular bar, without a great deal of affection.
“How d’you want me to introduce you to Pete?”
“As your victim. And as a potential business victim. You can tell him that I am on the way to Kep and that I am planning to invest there.”
On Rue Pasteur, close to the nightclub, a small traffic jam clogged the road. Ri
ch kids, the sons of the families who plundered the country, were trying to park their king-sized SUVs with horns blaring, while mouthing off to their compatriots. It appeared to be a fairly well-established and reasonably safe ritual – the children of the privileged were all surrounded by their personal teams of bodyguards. The street was in a permanent state of détente, yet just a few small steps short of apocalypse. With these people around, there would be occasional fuck-ups.
A food stall was mobbed by prostitutes – taxi girls. The young Khmer seemed to eat all day long – perhaps a reaction to periodic famine, which had many villages in its grip, even today. Ever since the Khmer Rouge had taken over the government and had begun to beat all educated Cambodians to death, there’d not been enough food to go around. Some Khmer had not had enough to eat for twenty-five years.
The music in the Heart of Darkness was loud. The bar was packed three deep. A small laser, the first in Phnom Penh, swished like a searchlight across the crowded dance floor to the sounds of Kylie Minogue’s “Can’t get you out of my head” – the vaguely futuristic dazzle caused a slight culture shock. The Heart was a different world. Backpackers, worn out, sleazy ex-pats – leftovers from the UNTAC years – and young, rich local thugs gyrated in front of the massive bass bins. Everyone danced in his or her own personal hedonistic movie. Taxi girls threw Ya-ba pills, cheap methamphetamines from Thailand, into each others’ mouths. Bowls of marihuana graced the long bar. The smoke of a hundred joints hung above the cashiers like a storm cloud.
The Heart was a Cambodian institution, a collection point for all those who couldn’t sleep at night and had money to burn.
Carissa made her way towards the bar. Maier followed her through the dense throng, her white head guiding him like a torch. The pool table was run by shredders, young and beautiful taxi girls who played the tourists for their wallets. On the wall above the table, a faded photograph of Tony Poe, a CIA operative who’d made his name collecting the heads and ears of his communist enemies during the Secret War in Laos in the Sixties, faced onto the dance floor. Maier had heard the stories from UN soldiers. Poe had been so awful, he’d eventually become the template for Marlon Brando’s Colonel Kurtz in Apocalypse Now. Maier smiled to himself. That was how small and post-modern the world had become. The Heart of Darkness was probably the best-known watering hole in Southeast Asia.