The Deceivers

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The Deceivers Page 12

by Harold Robbins


  “Really.” A pack cost somewhere between five and six dollars.

  “We also have some very nice aspects of the city,” Chantrea chimed in, smiling. “It’s not a big city. You can see the most important things in just a couple of days. This area has a lot of popular bars and restaurants frequented by foreigners and across the street is a strip of park that runs along the river. You’ll like the esplanade. It comes alive after the sun goes down and people come out for a breath of air.”

  “A carnival atmosphere,” Kirk said. “You can even ride on an elephant.”

  “We have the National Museum which is a stone’s throw from here, and the Royal Palace, silver Pagoda, and emerald Buddha are not much farther. They give tours of the palace even though the king still lives there. You really should see the gardens, they’re beautiful, and nearly as dazzling as the colorful tiles of the palace roof.”

  “I’ll skip the elephant, but I would like to see the museum.”

  “Good. I’ll be glad to show it to you. I have a meeting tomorrow, but if we start early, I can give you a tour of it. I’m not on the museum staff, but my position with Apsara gives me access to just about everything.”

  “Okay, I’d love that.”

  Kirk escorted me back to the Le Royal Hotel in one of the motorized rickshaws. “Don’t let Chantrea’s Pollyanna view of the city make you drop your guard. If you make a list of all the bad things in the world—heroin, teenage prostitution, rampant AIDS, illegal arms, money laundering, police corruption—you’ll find it here in the city, in spades. If you don’t believe me, take a look at the local English language papers—you’ll find ads in it from outfits that will negotiate with kidnappers.”

  I believed him. “Why don’t you tell me more about it over a drink I still owe you?”

  “You don’t owe me anything.”

  “Yes, I do. You came to my rescue.”

  I found out he was actually staying at the hotel attached to the Foreign Correspondents’ Club and had been in my neighborhood on business.

  We went into the Elephant Bar, an ensemble of old world Cambodian elegance and charm. He ordered an Angkor beer.

  “They have a popular drink here called the Femme Fatale. It’s a mixture of cognac and champagne. They supposedly created it for Jackie Kennedy. Want to try it?”

  “Sounds too potent to me right now. Maybe some other time. I’ll just take purified water.” I wasn’t in the mood for liquor.

  After listening to him talk about the ills of a country plagued by land mines and unexploded bombs for half an hour, I started to yawn.

  “I’m boring you, aren’t I?”

  I smiled. “No, you’re not. I don’t know why but my eyes are suddenly tired.” I couldn’t avoid another yawn. “Sorry.”

  “I can take a hint. You need your beauty sleep.”

  “I guess I’m still bummed out from jet lag.”

  “I’ll walk you to your room.”

  “That’s not necessary.”

  “No, I insist. That way I know you’re safe and sound.”

  He made it sound like my life was in danger.

  My room was close to the elevator. “Okay, here we are … thanks for the escort and for helping me today … good night.”

  We shook hands but after several seconds he still hadn’t let go of my hand. He looked in my eyes for a minute. Was he hoping I would change my mind and invite him inside? I was attracted to him, but I didn’t want him to think I hopped into bed on short notice.

  “Good night.” He started to leave, but then turned around. “I’m glad we met today.”

  “Me, too.”

  He gave me a quick kiss on the cheek and left.

  A real gentleman, I thought. Not at all like Detective Anthony.

  I sighed. Of course, it would have been nice to spend the night in the arms of a man.

  * * *

  WHEN I LOOKED at the clock, it was close to midnight. Even though I was ready to hit the sack, I had to do one thing before I went to bed. With the time difference involved I figured it was nine o’clock in the morning in San Francisco, a good time to catch an old art school classmate who worked at the National History Museum in Golden Gate Park.

  “Oh, yes,” Hailey Phillips said when I mentioned Bullock’s name. “Everyone in the Bay Area art world has heard of Emmet Bullock.”

  “Major dealer?”

  “Major prick … and you can add thief and pervert. His specialty is arranging for third world dealers to be victims of robberies.”

  It didn’t surprise me that Bullock was involved in a scam. Phony robberies was an old trick. Dealers couldn’t just smuggle well-known antiquities out of the country. When the pieces showed up in an auction catalog in New York or London, the cat was out of the bag. So a “robbery” was arranged. And it didn’t get reported to the police until the “thief” was safely out of the country and through customs with a phony bill of sale listing the items as reproductions.

  If the antiquities were ever tracked to an auction, the antique dealer back in the country of origin just shrugged his shoulders and told the police the thieves must have smuggled the pieces out of the country and sold them with a phony provenance.

  “Yeah, he didn’t have a good reputation to begin with, and ripping off museum pieces from poor countries hasn’t helped him.”

  “Where does the pervert part come in?”

  “I hear there’s a warrant out for him. He had his computer repaired and the tech found a slew of child porn stuff on his hard drive.”

  “I thought that only happened to priests and politicians.”

  She was still laughing as I hung up the phone.

  The National Museum of Arts in Phnom Penh … has a very rich collection of Khmer art.… [I]t lacks the most basic things, including security, locks, telephone lines, resources, etc.; as well as poor displays. On one occasion an exceptional statue was returned to Cambodia and then stolen again. Since then it has completely disappeared from view, most probably into somebody’s collection.

  —MASHA LAFONT, Pillaging Cambodia: The Illicit Traffic in Khmer Art

  15

  I met Chantrea for breakfast early the next morning. It was only seven yet the streets were alive and crowded, the noodle restaurants in full swing. On the smaller side streets people sat on squat stools and chatted as they ate their morning meal.

  “The city wakes up early,” she explained, “stays open until midday, shuts down for the heat of the afternoon, and then continues working until early evening.”

  Carts loaded with roasted peanuts, chicken and beef teriyaki sticks, and steamed dumplings lined the streets. Big blocks of ice were being dumped onto the sidewalk for food vendors to break up and keep their food from spoiling.

  I followed Chantrea’s lead and ordered spicy Shanghai noodles. “Is this the same theory as Mexican food—hot and spicy dishes keep you cooler?”

  “Nothing keeps you cool except air-conditioning and an evening breeze. I’m sure they serve an American breakfast of bacon and eggs at the hotel, but I thought you might want to try the local food.”

  “Great. I love Cambodian cuisine.” A small lie. I had actually never tried Cambodian food, but glancing around the other tables, I could see the food looked similar to the Thai and Chinese dishes I was used to eating.

  “It’s very good,” I said. The clear soup with noodles, bean sprouts, strips of shredded chicken, scallions, mint, and red peppers was hot and delicious.

  “I thought you’d like it. Rice and fish are the main staples for the Cambodian diet but noodle dishes are very popular.”

  We left the restaurant on foot and Chantrea hailed a motorized rickshaw. The National Museum faced the Tonle Sab River north of the Royal Palace.

  When we got off near the museum, an old woman approached me with a bird in a small cage.

  “What’s she saying?” I asked.

  “She wants you to buy the bird so you can release it. Our people believe that freeing a bird bring
s you happiness and a long life.”

  I bought the bird and set it free. “With my present state of luck, I should set a whole flock of birds free. Kirk said everything in the country had two faces. What’s the other face of the bird legend?”

  Chantrea laughed. “Some say that the birds are trained to fly back to the women who sell them.”

  “Recycled fortune. Just my luck.”

  The National Museum was built in Khmer architectural style with a brownish-red tone of terra-cotta. Exotic and graceful with multiple tiers of roofs gliding up to a tall spire, it reminded me more of a temple than a museum. Whimsical swirls at the edge of the roofs left an impression that the building could take magic flight.

  The building was ancient and venerable, serene, and even exotic. It was hard to believe it was a twentieth-century creation, opening in 1920. In America, the facades of modern museums were often ordinary concrete because the fine craftsmanship needed to make them individualistic was lost. Here in the Far East the art of exotic building remained true.

  As we went through the museum gateway, a uniformed man handed both of us a flower.

  “The flowers are given in the hope you’ll place a donation in the bowl that’s in front of a Buddha.” Chantrea smiled. “We’re a shockingly poor, politically corrupt country … but you can find Buddhist temples with donated money lying around in plain sight and no one will touch it.”

  Off to our right as we approached the museum entrance a life-size bronze of an elephant peered at us from bushes. At first glance it appeared to be a whole elephant, but when I stopped and took a good look I realized it was an illusion—only the head, tusks, front legs, and feet were shown. An outstanding piece, it conveyed the majestic quality of the great beast that is so symbolic of Asian culture.

  Khmer versions of fierce Chinese fu lions, the mythical protectors of temples and palaces, stood guard at the stairway leading up to the main entrance.

  A souvenir shop was on the right as we entered and guides to be hired on the left. We immediately came face-to-face with an unusual creature. Terrifying in an almost comical way.

  “Garuda,” Chantrea said.

  The huge, elephantinelike bird in front of the elaborate metal railing to a stairwell must have weighed a ton. It had human form, along with wings, beak, tail, and talons.

  “In Hindu mythology, Garuda was the bird that Vishnu rode across the sky. He carried Vishnu after he lost a bet with the god. Sometimes he’s identified with the sun itself. Right now he’s pointing the way into the exhibits. We have galleries for sandstone, bronze, ceramics, and one devoted mostly to Angkor Wat and Bayon styles.”

  Chantrea introduced me to Rim Nol, a curator, before going off to her meeting. She told Nol that I was an art expert from New York new to Khmer art, which was essentially what I had told her.

  “Nol is the assistant curator in charge of the finest Khmer pieces in the museum,” she said.

  I assumed Chantrea had given his name in the Cambodian fashion in that Rim was his family name and Nol his given name.

  The curator had white hair and the grave, stoic mannerisms of a scientist-philosopher.

  “The museum contains items dating back two thousand years,” Nol said. “Especially significant are pieces from the golden age of the Khmer empires. Are you familiar with Hindu mythology?”

  “Only vaguely. My training is in European and Mediterranean art.”

  “You Westerners rather accurately called this region of Cambodia, Vietnam, Thailand, so forth … Indochina. We not only physically lie between India and China, but our art and culture has been influenced by both.”

  I knew that most Khmer art was based upon Hindu mythology as well as influenced by Chinese art, but like dealing with Bolger, I felt it was more polite to let the curator guide me through.

  “Khmer culture assimilated several religious traditions of Hinduism and Buddhism to create its own unique beliefs. Each of our ancient kings associated himself with a particular god and built a temple dedicated to his patron divinity to solidify his symbolic relationship with that god. Each king also constructed at least one temple dedicated to his ancestors to ensure the continuation of the royal line. Some further emphasized their power by constructing barays, or reservoirs, to symbolize their glory.

  “Many of the pieces in our museum come from Angkor. Angkor Wat is the greatest and certainly the most famous of all the temples in the Angkor complex. Built by perhaps a million slaves, it is a Hindu structure whose main temples were constructed to mimic the universe. Water flowing in the surrounding hillsides represents the Ganges River in India and you can see hundreds of relief friezes depicting scenes from Hindu mythology like the Apsaras that adorn the temple. Virtually every surface is covered with carvings depicting characters and episodes from Hindu legends.”

  We paused in front of a pinkish sandstone head with piercing eyes and lethal fangs.

  “A yaksha,” Nol said. “An evil-tempered demigod. They were cruel, violent giants who caused troubles for the gods.”

  It was amazing how someone chiseling hard stone could bring out the ugly soul of a mythical character.

  I let him show me other pieces, including a bas-relief battle scene from the great Hindu epic Mahabharata before I made a beeline for the original Siva that had been copied and sold at a New York auction. It was a lovely piece, old and fragile yet a survivor of centuries of political upheaval, war, storms, and neglect.

  I nodded at the Siva. “I understand there are significant problems with faking Khmer antiquities and selling them as authentic pieces.”

  “Yes, a big problem.”

  “This is the one that was copied, wasn’t it?”

  “That is what I am told.”

  I thought he would tell me more about it but he didn’t.

  Nol’s face remained impassive, but I sensed a subtle shift in his posture. Since I had been at auctions where millions of dollars are at stake with the flick of a bidder’s paddle, I had to be aware of what poker players call the “tells,” almost imperceptible changes in body language. A Persian rug dealer once told me he knew if a buyer wanted a particular carpet just by watching the person’s eyes—the pupils would widen when they were shown a rug that caught their eye.

  In this case Nol’s pupils narrowed when I mentioned fake art. It reminded me of temple doors closing shut to keep secrets from escaping. It set off alarm bells for me.

  As we walked around the museum, I asked questions about the different pieces in an attempt to get him to open up more. My impression was that this gentle, intelligent curator, who loved museum pieces like parents love their children, could not be involved with art fraud, yet I was sure he wanted to tell me something but was too rigid, perhaps too frightened, to speak up.

  I’d been in other third world countries like the Middle East and Africa so I knew better than to put someone on the spot with a subject matter that could get him into trouble with the police.

  As I examined another thousand-year-old Siva piece, this one a beautiful sandstone in which the powerful god was holding a smaller version of his consort, the mother goddess Uma, I caught Nol staring at me, as if he was about to say something. Whatever it was, the impulse passed and he moved away.

  “Chantrea didn’t mention it, but I was also once a museum curator,” I said. “We specialized in Mesopotamian art.”

  He nodded. “The land between the rivers. The cradle of Western civilization. Certainly a worthy area of study for a curator.”

  “I screwed up. Royally.”

  He stared at me.

  I smiled and shrugged. “In American terminology, I made a huge mistake. I bought a Babylonian piece that had been looted.”

  “Yes, I understand. The museum in Baghdad was extensively looted when law and order broke down as American troops entered the city. You must have felt bad to have purchased one of the stolen pieces, but I understand thousands were lost during the looting.”

  “Close to fifteen thousand. But I fel
t more than bad. I lost my job because I had paid a lot for the piece, relying on a phony provenance.”

  He stared around, as if he worried that our suddenly intense conversation was being watched.

  “Let me show you the courtyards,” he said.

  I followed him into a lovely area where a statue of what I first took to be a Buddha was surrounded by a small pond.

  “The Leper King,” Nol said.

  “Is there a legend about him?”

  “We call him Dharmaraja, but it’s most likely he’s based on the Hindu god of death, Yama. Some people say he’s called the Leper King only because of the discoloration from moss and fungus growing on him, but there were two Cambodian kings who suffered from leprosy.” He gave me a sympathetic look. “I know the story of the Babylonian piece.”

  I nodded. “That doesn’t surprise me. The entire universe of museum antiquities isn’t that large. Besides, nothing can be hidden from the Internet.”

  “The story was carried in a French journal of art. I didn’t recognize your name when Chantrea spoke it, but I do now that you have refreshed my memory.”

  “I have a great sympathy for your situation here in Cambodia. Your looting has been going on for decades.”

  “Many of the finest pieces of our national heritage are in museums and collections in other countries.”

  “I don’t know what that article you read about me said, but the Babylonian piece ultimately went back to where it belonged.”

  A woman who had come out of the building spoke to him in Cambodian.

  “I’m sorry,” he told me, “my superior has a question I must respond to.”

  “Perhaps we can talk later?”

  He shook his head. “Not today. I will be attending a staff meeting most of the afternoon.”

  “Perhaps tomorrow—”

  “I will not be here. I volunteer one day a week at Choeung Ek. Have you been there?”

  “No. I haven’t heard of it.”

  “The Killing Fields exhibit.”

  “Oh, yes.”

  “I will be there all day tomorrow. If you decide to come, I will show you around the exhibits and explain this saddest period in our history.”

 

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