Temple of Gold

by A. J. Stewart

  Lenny was closely examining a rifle.

  “What’s up?” Lucas asked.

  “These aren’t ours, but they’re not Russian, either.”

  “What are they?”

  “They’re Type 56 rifles. A Chinese knockoff of the AK-47.”

  “Chinese? Why are these guys using Chinese rifles instead of yours?”

  “Why Chinese is easy. China always backed the Khmer Rouge regime. A similar strain of communism, I’ve been told. But why not ours? I can only guess. These rifles are a different caliber from M16s, so maybe they’re just using up whatever ammo they already have.”

  “They don’t look like they’re seeing much action.”

  “No. Which makes me wonder whether it was the guns they wanted from us, after all.”

  “What else did you give them?”

  Lenny grinned. “That would be telling. Let’s get out of here.”

  He doused the lamp and they slipped from the shed, replaced the padlock and then snuck to the second storage shed, where Lenny similarly defeated another lock. He looked for another lamp, which Lucas also lit.

  This storage shed was similar but different. It boasted stacks of crates, and racks along the walls, but there were no weapons visible, and few of the crates were open.

  The crates, though, were familiar to both men.

  “This is your kit,” said Lucas, lifting the lid on an open crate to reveal an M16.

  “It is,” replied Lenny. He moved to a shelf and picked up a discarded metal box. It was yellow and had a meter on the front, with a small probe sticking out of it.

  “What’s that?” asked Lucas.

  “A Geiger counter.”

  “Yours?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why would you be giving Tan a Geiger counter?”

  “We’re in the middle of a cold war—haven’t you heard?”

  “Newsflash, mate. If either of your blokes or their blokes launch your nukes, a Geiger counter won’t tell you anything that a mushroom cloud couldn’t.”

  “What can I tell you? There are guys on both sides who actually think they’ll be around to measure the aftereffects. What have you got?”

  “This crate’s half empty. Check it out.”

  Lucas held up the metal detector.

  Lenny said, “That’s from Uncle Sam as well.”

  “Don’t need a metal detector to find that big pit out there.”

  “Maybe they’re looking for more?”

  “Or landmines?”

  “Could be.”

  “I’ve heard mines are now getting made from a plastic that can’t be detected,” said Lucas.

  “Sure, but pretty much everything that was laid in Southeast Asia is old.”

  “Did these blokes ask for this stuff, or did you just give them a bunch of gear?”

  “I imagine we got a list of some sort. Metal detectors wouldn’t be on every deposed dictator’s shopping list.”

  Lenny looked again at the Geiger counter. If General Tan had requested these items, why Geiger counters? Did he really think they would be useful if the US and the Soviets went to war? Or was there something more immediate in his thinking? Lenny turned the device on. The speaker crackled loudly, the pitch rising and falling as he waved it around.

  “Does that mean there’s radiation here?” asked Lucas.

  “There’s radiation everywhere. This reading suggests it’s on the high end of normal. But sunlight is radiation, and there’s no shortage of that here.”

  Lenny turned off the device and returned it to the shelf.

  “Let’s keep moving.”

  They retreated from the shed and back into the trees. The camp was quiet. The villagers were still nowhere to be seen.

  They surveyed the tents. This was clearly where the children were being kept, but the tents were not all the same. Some were larger. And Lenny knew enough about military life to know that those in charge never slept in the tighter quarters.

  Some men returned to eat lunch—what appeared to be soup and rice and water—and then they smoked and talked for a while, and eventually they lazily stood and ambled back toward the mine. Some headed due north, toward what Lenny didn’t know.

  They gave it another hour before moving. The sun was dropping now but the heat wasn’t, and long shadows fell across the camp. Lenny pointed at one of the larger tents and Lucas nodded. They slipped around to the front, where a canopy shaded the entrance. A chair and small table sat underneath. They hurried into the tent.

  It was large enough to house ten men, but even though it clearly only had one resident it still felt small. A large rug had been placed down as a makeshift floor. There was a single cot to the side, and a large table being used as a desk, with an old dining chair behind it. Papers and maps were strewn across the desk, along with a number of books. In fact, apart from the minimal furniture, every inch of floor space was covered in stacks of books. They stood like sculptures created in a time of darkness to remind people of a time of illumination. Lenny and Lucas slipped between the stacks, careful not to knock any over.

  Most were hardback textbooks. Some of the spines featured the Cambodian Khmer script, while others were in French and English. Lenny caught a few words as he moved through the tent: anthropology, archeology, history. There was an Oxford English Dictionary and a copy of Darwin’s On the Origin of Species.

  Lenny reached the desk. There were books about metallurgy and more books with Khmer script. A map of the western region of Cambodia was half unrolled, held in place by a jar of dirt. Another map—this one hand-drawn—was centered on the desk. Lenny recognized the layout of the camp, and the dominant features of the pit mine and the swimming pool hole. North of the camp someone had circled an area in marker. Lenny recalled the flyover photographs, but couldn’t remember anything other than scrub in that area. Perhaps that was the site for the next pit mine.

  Lenny and Lucas looked at each other. The space felt incongruous in the circumstances. The Khmer Rouge had shot educated people and burned books, yet here, in this Khmer Rouge stronghold in the jungle, was a tent that resembled a library.

  Or, Lenny thought, the office of an academic man.

  He got no further with the thought, though, as the tent-flap opened and a tall thin man stepped inside.

  Chapter Twenty

  All three froze.

  The newcomer wore a dusty white shirt and gray pants, and round spectacles sat on a nose too small for his face. He looked Cambodian but was taller than most, and although he was thin he didn’t share the malnourished pallor of the villagers. What he was doing was sweating. Heavily. He looked like he’d just run a marathon.

  The man didn’t move anything but his eyes. He took in Lenny and Lucas—their green military-style clothing, the rifles hanging from their shoulder straps. When he spoke, he did so quietly.

  “Qui êtes-vous?” he asked.

  Lenny didn’t know a lot of French, but he knew enough. “Friends,” he said, keeping his hands casually away from his rifle.

  “You speak English,” said the man.

  “As do you.”

  “Who are you? What are you doing in my tent?”

  “We’re interested onlookers. We mean no harm.”

  “You are American? CIA?”

  Lenny jinked his head as if this may or may not be true.

  “What do you want with my things?”

  “You’ve got a lot of books here,” said Lenny.

  “What do you want?”

  “We’re curious about the yellow metal.”

  The man frowned. “The what?”

  “The gold,” said Lucas.

  The man took a long, slow breath. “The gold. Of course. What do you need to know?”

  “People are getting sick here. How is gold mining doing that?”

  “Sick people, you say?”

  “Yes, I do say.”

  “You need to speak with the man in charge about that. I will ask him to come. Wait here, please
.”

  The man backed out of the tent quickly and the flap dropped into place. Lenny and Lucas exchanged glances.

  “You think he’s gone to get help of the good kind or the bad kind?” asked Lenny.

  “I don’t think he’ll be serving tea and crumpets.”

  They didn’t wait to find out. Lenny dropped to the floor and lifted the edge of the tent. It was well pegged, so he pulled a couple out of the ground; when he made enough room, he rolled underneath and outside. He scanned the campsite for movement as Lucas rolled under, too.

  They broke for the trees, where they dropped low and watched as the tall man returned from the mess area with two disinterested-looking guards in tow.

  “Told ya,” said Lucas.

  “No tea and crumpets for you,” said Lenny.

  The man strode to the front of his tent and out of view. From across the campsite someone barked orders, and the two guards turned in place, as if unsure what to do. Then more yelling.

  General Tan stormed into view, screaming at his men. Lenny recognized him immediately. He didn’t appear angry, but his voice wasn’t exactly filled with joy. He stopped just in view and spoke, presumably, to the man from the tent, who remained unseen. Then Tan spoke to the two guards, who ran away.

  Within minutes, men with Chinese rifles descended from all directions and, under Tan’s orders, began forming a perimeter around the camp.

  “He’s organized,” said Lucas.

  “And they’re coming this way,” replied Lenny.

  “Then let’s adios.”

  They moved deeper into the trees but still followed the camp’s perimeter, until they were at about five on the dial. The guards with the red-checkered kerchiefs circled the camp in tight formation, all except for the eastern side.

  “Why are they leaving that quadrant open?” asked Lucas.

  “To give us somewhere to run. Flush us out.”

  “Well, let’s not disappoint.”

  “You think you can outrun a bullet now, Superman?” asked Lenny with a smirk.

  “Outrun, no. But . . .” He pointed to a canvas tarp strung up in the trees. Under it sat a motor pool, of sorts. It was the truck that had shuttled workers to and from the village, as well as the second truck they had seen when Ventura delivered his gifts. And beside the trucks, two beat-up Chinese motorcycles.

  “Let’s ride,” said Lenny.

  Once the cordon of guards moved past the motor pool, Lenny and Lucas burst from the trees and ran under the cover of the long shadows. They reached the tarp canopy and found the bikes chained together. Lucas raised his eyebrows, and Lenny fell to unlocking the padlock. They were pulling the chains through the wheels of the bikes when one of the nearby guards heard the rattle and turned, and with a banshee-like scream raised the alarm.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Then things got loud. Screaming and yelling, but not, seemingly, any kind of actual communication. The sound of footsteps running toward them was lost as they kicked the motorcycles to life. The engines complained loudly but nevertheless moved as ordered. Lenny hit the throttle and skidded out past the parked truck, with Lucas right alongside.

  It was then that they realized the chain they had pulled through the wheels was also wrapped around each of their handlebars, binding the two bikes together. They tried to pull apart but were nearly yanked off their seats.

  They headed across such rough ground that they nearly bounced off their bikes. There were more trees in the distance ahead, but there was a long open stretch of land before they would reach it. The setting sun cast everything in shadow, making the terrain impossible to decipher.

  Lucas headed up, the ground rising imperceptibly but definitely, as Lenny dropped away. Neither eased up on the throttle—wanting as much room as possible between themselves and the men with guns—and Lenny made a last-minute swerve toward Lucas to create some slack in the tautening chain. With both hands off the handlebars, he whipped the chain free from his own bike, and then swerved sharply, to avoid the side of the depression he was riding into. Above, Lucas pulled away, chain dragging behind.

  Lenny saw the earth rise up on either side of him, as if he were driving into a small canyon. But this was no canyon. It was the swimming pool—what they suspected was a mass grave in the making. It was deeper, and longer, than the photo had suggested. The end he had entered was like a beach entry pool—a gradual incline descending toward the deep end.

  An end that Lenny couldn’t see but knew was in front of him somewhere. He saw the shadows in the channel rise up to become a wall ahead almost before he could do anything about it. He hit the brakes hard and leaned over and skidded, with a heavy thud, side-on into the wall.

  Lenny took a moment to assess that all his bits were intact. He was shaken but not broken. Clouds of dust enveloped him, and a sprinkling of dirt fell from the wall above. The bike had stalled, but it didn’t appear irreparably damaged. He looked back toward the camp and listened hard. He heard no footsteps, no gunfire, no chasing vehicles. It was as if Tan and his men knew they had him cornered, and were in no hurry to swoop in for the kill.

  Then the smell hit him. Over the dirt and the hint of spilled gasoline, a stench rose from the ground. It was putrid and rotten, and Lenny was overcome by the fear that he was indeed standing in a mass grave. He looked wildly around, struggling to see between the light above and the shadow of this deep hole. He followed the smell and the growing buzz of insects.

  And then he saw it.

  The carcass of a goat. Like the people of the village, the goat looked malnourished, but it clearly hadn’t died of hunger. Its throat had been cut, clean through. It had died where it lay, and had been left. Lenny was bewildered. Why had near-starving people left it there?

  He would have to figure it out later. He was at the bottom of a ditch, like standing in the deep end of a pool without any water in it. There was no way up the fifteen feet of crumbling wall above him, so the only way out was back the way he had come. He couldn’t hear the guards approaching, but figured they must be out there. He turned the motorcycle around and pushed it back toward the entrance. Surprise was his only hope. Wait until he could see either the enemy or the other end of the pool, and then start the bike up again.

  He kept his ears open, hearing the slow crunch of dirt under the tires, but no sound of chasing men. He stopped when he heard a low guttural rumble. The sound seemed to echo off the dirt walls that should have absorbed it. He knew it wasn’t a truck, guessing it to be something more organic. He pushed the bike further and felt the ground begin to rise.

  He heard the guttural sound again, deep and resonant. A sound he had heard before, but so long ago that it took some retrieving from his mental files. It rumbled on and on, now almost constant. An impatient sound.

  He saw the tiger at the exact same moment he remembered a school field trip to the San Diego Zoo. He had been enamored with the majesty of the tiger striding up and down behind the glass. To a small boy it had seemed so huge, and infinitely powerful.

  Face to face it looked even bigger. This tiger’s head was the size of three large watermelons and its shoulders were several feet apart. It stood in a low, almost apologetic bow, but it wasn’t baring its teeth. It didn’t need to. The sound emanating from deep within was one that man had been programmed over millennia to fear.

  And Lenny feared it. He stopped as the animal prowled slowly forward, and then, realizing its prey was trapped, it paced from side to side, summing him up. Looking for weaknesses, or perhaps playing with its food.

  Lenny eased the bike in front of him. It wouldn’t be much of an impediment but at least it was something. He felt his rifle hanging across his back, and thought about swinging it around and shooting, but he let the idea pass. It was a rifle, not a machine gun, and it would take far too long to get into any kind of firing position, so instead he braced and slowly edged the motorcycle around to face back into the ditch.

  The beast growled as it charged, and Lenny le
aped into the air and landed on the motorcycle’s kickstart, which started with a burst. As he hit the throttle, the tiger launched itself into the air. He turned and the rear wheel spun hard around, spitting up dirt at the big cat as it clawed at his rear tire, and giving Lenny a yard or so more distance. The tiger quickly regathered and charged after the motorbike.

  Lenny didn’t know how fast a tiger could run, but figured if properly motivated, it would be pretty fast. He also didn’t know the acceleration of a beat-up old Chinese motorcycle, but guessed the arithmetic wasn’t in his favor.

  He threw his leg over the motorcycle seat and screamed away, knowing his escape had only seconds to run. A fifteen-foot wall lay ahead, a rampant tiger behind. He didn’t stop, but turned the throttle harder.

  Lenny pulled at the handlebars and angled the bike as he hit the wall. It was near vertical, so there was no chance of riding up the slope, but that wasn’t his goal. Not exactly. There was a lot more hope involved in his plan. The bike tire bit into the jagged rock, and for a moment it seemed it would defy gravity. The bike went up the wall—a foot, then two.

  The tiger was almost upon Lenny. The bike climbed, and a smile began to form on Lenny’s lips, but it never fully developed. The bike reached its apex and then succumbed, inevitably, to gravity. Lenny felt the front of the bike fall away from the wall, and he pivoted his body, and the motorcycle with it.

  Lenny looked out to see the tiger launching itself at him. He could almost smell its meaty breath, but thought, perhaps, that was only the goat carcass that lay untouched nearby. The tiger opened its mighty jaws and Lenny saw nothing but teeth, and then the motorcycle dropped into the tiger’s path, and the huge cat slammed head first into it, putting a large dent in the gas tank.

  The bike fell away and Lenny kicked off the seat and stretched himself upward, as if he might, somehow, be able to wrap his fingers around the lip of the ditch, but knowing he was going to be a good seven feet short. Seven feet short of living another day.