Cambodian Book of the Dead

by Tom Vater

  The older girl had run and reached the edge of the forest beyond the paddy fields. Maier was also running. The teenager had left her younger sister behind, a daughter who had stayed next to the father she had just killed. Maier looked back across his shoulder.

  Tep’s men were queuing up to rob the little sister of her innocence, life and liver. Some had leathery wings and hovered above their victim like attack helicopters. Flap-flap-flap-flap.

  A white spider, as tall as a house, appeared on the edge of the village. The men shrank back and made a tight circle around the girl and her dying father. The white spider moved slowly towards the circle. It did not hesitate, it just took its time. Maier ran on, his mind locked in terror. He no longer dared to turn. The fire rolled across the family, the village and the land. Maier’s tears were not sufficient to put out the flames.

  “Maier, are you crying in your sleep? Have you missed me that much or did you go soft back home in Deutschland?”

  The morning breeze ran coolly across his sweat-soaked back and he crept deeper into the arms of the girl who’d become a woman. Carissa lifted her head, her white hair alive like the tufts of the Medusa.

  SELF-DEFENCE

  Pete’s hair looked more fiercely red in bright, merciless daylight than it had in the damp flickers of the Cambodian night. It didn’t look natural. The Englishman was just devouring his very English breakfast at the Pink Turtle, a pavement restaurant on Sisowath Quay – scrambled eggs, bacon, sausage, baked beans, toast and grilled tomatoes, all of it swimming in a half centimetre of fat.

  Despite the previous evening’s shooting and a royal hangover, the dive shop owner was in a good mood. A can of Angkor Beer sat sweating next to his delectable culinary choice.

  “So this French guy walks into a bank the other day. The newest bank in town. Just opened. Air-con and all. And he walks up to the cashier and pulls out a shooter. There are three security guys in this bank, armed with pump actions. But they don’t know what to do, they’re so fucking surprised. A barang robbing a bank? How mad is that? But then the French geezer makes a mistake. As the cashier hands him a bag full of dollars, he puts his gun down on the counter. He just lost it for a sec. That’s when they jump him. It’s just too easy. Fucking prick’s in jail, looking at twenty. Had gambling debts and they threatened to cut his girl’s throat, only she was in on it. Great Scambodian fairy tale, so fucking typical.”

  Carissa ordered two coffees. Pete was on a roll.

  “The dive business is going good, mate, it really is. We have great dive sites a half hour from the beach by long-tail boat. Our customers get to see turtles and reef sharks, and there’s plenty of titan trigger fish and large barracuda out there. As long as they don’t overdo the dynamite. But I’m an optimist. We’re searching for new dive spots all the time. There are hundreds of wrecks down there. And every year, more and more tourists come here. The first real beach resort only just opened. That’s Tep’s of course.”

  “And what else does Tep do?” Maier asked, his eyes recovering behind a pair of mirror shades.

  Pete shrugged his narrow shoulders. “Yeah, I agree, mate, that didn’t look too cool last night. It was well ugly. But luckily, this kind of thing doesn’t happen too often. Almost never.” The Englishman must have noticed a shadow of doubt cross Maier’s face. “It was virtually self-defence.”

  Maier smiled. “Virtually.”

  Carissa laughed throatily. “The boy shot the bald guy in the back, Pete. Only in Cambodia is this called self-defence, and only if you know the right people and have sacks full of cash.”

  “You were always very principled, babe. You know exactly how things stand and fall here. In a small dump like Kep everyone knows and respects the boss. Otherwise you can’t run a business or do anything. In Cambodia, you need good connections and a strong will to live.”

  Carissa, resigned boredom painted across her face, shrugged lazily.

  “Always the same excuses. And you screw the taxi girls because you are really humane employers who believe in equal opportunities and don’t want to see them exploited by Gap in the garment factories.”

  Pete stopped concentrating on his beans for a moment and winked at Maier. “Some get bitter as they get older. Others realise what they’ve missed. Life’s a short and meaningless trip crammed with suffering and emptiness. I knew that when I was five years old. You don’t need the Buddha to realise that. I think it’s best to fish for as much money and pussy as possible. Come on, babe, Carissa, you’re not so different.”

  The journalist rolled her eyes in silence and lit a crinkled joint she had fished out of her handbag. How quickly you get used to the small rituals of friends, Maier thought.

  “Does Tep have enough connections upstairs in the government to suppress the incident in the Heart completely?”

  “Yeah, he does. He’s got a few old mates in government. The bald playboy in the Armani suit went mad on drugs and shot himself. There are witnesses who swear he took a bunch of pills before he pulled his gun, put it to his chest and pulled the trigger. Over and over, apparently. That ketamine is strong.”

  “Then I don’t have a real story. Just a suicide on drugs won’t do,” Carissa complained.

  The Englishman grinned at her.

  “No you don’t, unless you want a shed load of trouble.”

  “So what else does your influential friend do?”

  “Tep’s a businessman. He knows he can’t be too greedy. He needs us foreigners as much as we need him. And unfortunately the country also needs can-do guys like Tep. Together we create employment opportunities. And not just for taxi girls, as Carissa likes to think.”

  “This doesn’t really answer my question.”

  “You’re a pretty curious type, Maier. Normally the Krauts are a bit more reticent.”

  Maier let the remark pass, almost.

  “Before I invest anything here, I want to know how much disappears in the quicksand. And that didn’t look too good last night. I have read good things about Kep, but I have also heard good things about Koh Samui in Thailand.”

  Pete relaxed, pushed his plate away, lit an Ara and laughed drily. “Maier. Don’t be so German, so pessimistic. Come down to the coast and meet my partner, Rolf. He’s just as much a true human being as you two, and still, he’s happy. And anyway, people shoot each other on Samui all the time. Every month, people go AWOL and are found later, half-eaten and drifting in the Gulf. I know, cause most of them are countrymen of mine. That’s how it is in these parts. That’s why we’re here and not at home.”

  Pete beamed at his breakfast companions.

  “But in contrast to the overcrowded, unfriendly beaches in Thailand, Kep is stunningly beautiful and quiet, just totally fucking idyllic. We have a few hours of electricity a day, no traffic, no disco, no Internet. And on top of that, Kep has plenty of traces of this country’s sad history, something you Germans usually go for, no?”

  Maier had gotten tired of the Englishman’s jokes and had withdrawn into himself. “Two world wars and one world cup” appeared to define Pete’s idea of Germans. He was hardly unique. Southeast Asia was a favourite destination for the UK’s piratical and lawless white trash underclass. But the little red-haired, wrinkled man had still not finished.

  “Just one thing, mate, a friendly piece of advice. People who get too curious about how things work in Cambodia, people who ask too many questions, are in danger of giving the impression that they might not be around for the reasons they say they are. If Tep gets this impression of visitors, it can have really heavy consequences for them. It’s better to let life roll along at its natural pace down there and to roll with it, then most questions will be answered anyway. I’m sure you understand me.”

  “I must be lucky then that I let life roll at its natural pace last night.” Maier laughed.

  Pete reached across the table and slapped Maier’s shoulder like an old friend. “You’re a fun guy to be around, Maier. That’s why my advice comes flowing
your way. Our community down there in Kep is so small that every newcomer is looked at, like under a magnifying glass. It’s just a local reflex. We don’t mean anything by it. And anyway, you come with the best of references.”

  Maier looked across at Carissa. Was this skinny little Englishman threatening him or was it all just talk? Maier did not want to fall in love with his old colleague again, but now he was worried and that was never a good sign. The detective rarely worried. Worries made life, this short and meaningless journey of suffering and emptiness, more complicated. The Buddha had been right about most things.

  But Maier had no time to philosophise. The young waitress of the Pink Turtle appeared with a tray, loaded with three whiskeys, on the rocks.

  Just like the freebooter he was, Pete had remembered the most important thing of all. “I know, Maier, you don’t like drinking beer. I already noticed that. It makes you very likeable somehow. Let’s drink Jack Daniels to the man who doesn’t like beer! Cheers.”

  Maier did not like whiskey much either, but he lifted his glass. He was on duty.

  ON THE BEACH

  Maier was the day’s first drinker in the Last Filling Station. The ramshackle bar stood on the edge of a beach in a palm orchard, a few hundred metres west of what was left of Kep-sur-Mer. More than a hundred villas slowly crumbled into the brush along the coast towards the Vietnamese border. Kep was a ghost town about to be reconquered by the jungle. Even the Angkor Hotel, near the crab market, was in a pitiful condition, its pockmarked walls protected by downwardly mobile shards of sheet metal. Maier had taken a room right under the roof. During the night, the rain had roared all around him, loud enough to drown out the noise of the television, which, powered by a car battery, had run at top volume in what passed as a lobby until dawn. Just as well all good roads in the world led to a bar. And the Last Filling Station was special. It was the only bar in Kep, and in the mornings, it served the desperate.

  “This town has seen better days.”

  “It has. But the impression of total collapse is misleading, buddy. Kep has had a demanding history and it ain’t done yet.”

  The old American behind the counter gave a friendly nod and lit a joint. The moist and pungent smoke rolled through the heavy air towards Maier. The proprietor was a small, fat man with hairy, tattooed arms that stuck out of an old, sleeveless Bruce Springsteen T-shirt. Born in the USA, no doubt about it. His lumpy face, in which two beady eyes threatened to drown, descended to several ridges of double chins. His voice had crawled out of a Louisiana backwater and forgotten to dry off. The thumb on his right hand was missing. He was a character.

  The establishment’s décor perfectly reflected its owner’s personality. In the Last Filling Station, the Vietnam War was celebrated like a nostalgic road trip. Behind the counter, the shelf crammed with mostly empty liquor bottles had been welded together from machine gun parts. A torn cloth of the Rolling Stones’ tongue hung like a pirate flag from a wooden pole that had been lodged, with the help of a couple of CBU bomb cases, into the ground in the centre of the small square room. The ceiling fan squawked like a tired seagull and barely managed to turn the air in the bar. Around the fan, spent mortar shells and hand grenades hung suspended from the ceiling. Willie Peter canisters, once the receptacles for white phosphorus, which burned through skin like napalm, served as ashtrays.

  It was too early to smoke and drink. Maier had only just started working.

  “First time in Kep?”

  “Yes.”

  “But not the first trip to Cambodia, right?”

  The American had a good eye for people.

  “No, I was here a few times between ’93 and ’97, came as a journalist.”

  The American’s tiny eyes lit up.

  “Is there anything to report from Kep that the world might be interested in?”

  “No idea. I no longer work in the media business.”

  The man behind the counter shrugged.

  “That’s probably for the best. Folks who ask too many questions around here end up floating in the soup pretty damn soon.”

  “You’ve already asked me three questions, be careful.” Maier laughed and offered the American his hand. The bar owner’s thumbless paw was huge and badly scarred.

  “Maier.”

  “Les. Les ‘Snakearm’ Leroux.”

  “Really?”

  “Really! My momma called me Lesley Leroux. And they called me Snakearm in Vietnam.”

  “Snakearm?”

  “Because I could squeeze the life out of a python with one hand.”

  “No shit?”

  “No shit. Made a heap of money in some dark places in Saigon, right up to the day we abandoned ship and honour. That was three questions, buddy. One more and I’ll shoot you dead.”

  “Vodka orange?”

  “Bang.”

  The war vet was an instantly likeable guy. And the Last Filling Station was the perfect place to drink your troubles away on a lonely near-equatorial morning. Not that Maier had anything to be mournful about. Not yet. He was only just getting started on this case. Perhaps, in the absence of empathy or depression, he could drink his soul’s soul.

  “So what happened here? Was the town destroyed in the war?”

  The American shook his head.

  “Kep was the Saint Tropez of Cambodia. The French showed up in the late nineteenth century and started it off with a few hotels, churches and brothels between the jungle and the sea. In the Fifties, Kep became popular with Khmer high society who came down from Phnom Penh and built weekend villas. They had it all just the way they wanted it – waterskiing and cocktail parties, barbecues and rock’n’roll bands on the beach. But the good life ended with Sihanouk’s departure. Rich folks boarded up their houses and stopped coming. The KR were here from ’71 to ’77 and they did kill quite a few locals, but there wasn’t much fighting here. Then in ’79, when the Nam invaded, the harvest didn’t happen. People broke into the houses and stripped them, even chiselled the steel out of the walls. Whatever they got, they exchanged with the Vietnamese for rice. Hard times.”

  Les coughed thick clouds of smoke across the dark, scratched wood of the bar.

  “But that was all a long time ago. Now we got three hotels in Kep and the first scuba diving outfit opened some while ago. At weekends it gets really crowded with locals who come for the crabs. The crabs are fucking delicious, you should try them. About a dollar a kilo. Otherwise, backpackers, weekenders from Phnom Penh, adventurers and lunatics. Which crowd d’you run with, Maier?”

  A young Vietnamese woman with a closed face and short black hair that was trying to grow in several directions at once appeared silently in the door between the bar and kitchen and handed Maier his vodka orange. Les had his hands full with his joint.

  “That’s the fashion in Vietnam these days. The girls want to look like the guys in the boy bands.”

  Van Morrison’s “Brown-Eyed Girl” poured from the speakers that hung amongst the ordnance from the ceiling. The wall facing the sea had been almost completely destroyed and replaced by thin wooden slats. The other walls, in which various calibres had left their marks, were covered with framed photographs of the American wars in Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia.

  Les pointed at a faded image of a young man in jeans, sporting a huge moustache, posing in front of a helicopter. “I was a pilot. First I flew Hueys out of Danang for the Navy. Later I worked for Air America in Laos. Black Ops. Top Secret. This shot was taken in Vientiane. We flew weapons, troops and drugs for the CIA. Then, from ’73 on, I was here, until the KR took over.”

  “You must have been on one of those last buses full of foreigners to leave Phnom Penh, which the Khmer Rouge accompanied to the Thai border?”

  “No, wasn’t there. Just prior to that, I evacuated employees from our embassy. I flew an overloaded Huey to one of our ships. After the last flight, we tipped the bird off the ship and into the sea, just like my colleagues did off Saigon. You can’t imagine how that felt
.”

  “So why did you come back?”

  Les “Snakearm” Leroux looked around his bar as if he’d just entered it for the very first time.

  “I ain’t a historian or anything. But I saw a lot in the war. I saw a lot of war. Not all of us were junkies, at least not all of the time. I knew even then that politics was behind the rise of the KR. We ran an awesome air campaign against suspected Vietnamese positions inside Laos and Cambodia. We killed thousands of civilians and carpet-bombed their fields. How is a Khmer farmer supposed to understand that a plane drops from the sky and burns his village to the fucking ground? Just think, one payload dropped from a B-52 bomber destroyed everything over a three square kilometre area. Everything. Nothing’s left after that. We atomised people. We vaporised them. Hundreds of thousands died. And that was before the KR ever took over.”

  Les lit the next joint. Maier was sure that the pilot had shared his story, his trauma, his life, with anyone who came through his door with open ears. It was a good story.

  “Anyway, buddy, the war years were my best. We lived from day to day, hour to hour. We drank through the nights and learned Vietnamese, Lao, Thai and Khmer from the taxi girls. Many of us also consumed industrial quantities of opium, heroin, LSD, amphetamines and marihuana, uppers and downers. And in the morning we were back up in the mountains to pick something up or drop something off, to set fire to some village, to carry on killing. As I said, my best years.”

  A bout of coughing interrupted his nostalgia. “When it was all over, I had no desire to go back home. The New Orleans that I’d left more than ten years earlier no longer existed. That’s how it goes in war, I guess. It changes the perspective, and stands everything that you learn about life on its damn head. Back home everything was too much and too little at the same time. And every fucking hippy I passed in the street shouted abuse at me. I had to ask myself whether I qualified as a war criminal or not. How much of your responsibility can you shift to others? I had changed into something else in the East. I was burnt out from being burnt out. I couldn’t face queuing up in a supermarket. Never again.”