Phnom Penh Express (16 page)

Forty-five minutes later Billy is standing in his office. A Johnny Cash CD is playing softly in the background while Billy stares out of the window, his hands crossed behind his back. The moment he had entered his office, he had downloaded the snapshot of Phirun’s companion from his mobile phone and sent it to one of his former academy buddies at Quantico, to run it through their database. He might even get a reply today, he hopes. His eyes trail the ramshackle traffic on Street 96 below, but his mind is fixated on that mysterious shop. His gut feeling tells him that if he wants more clues, he’ll have to check the chocolate place out.

Billy turns away from the window and sits down at his desk to make a call. One brisk conversation later, he leans back into his leather swivel chair. The bugging equipment he just ordered will be sent from the Bureau’s local Legat office or
Legal Attaché
. Considering Billy’s senior position, no questions had been asked. All he’d need to do is plant the bug inside that chocolate house. Normally he could send one of his agents to take care of it, but since he hasn’t inducted anyone else into his bare-bones taskforce just yet — which he won’t pursue till he’s got more evidence — he’ll have to do the job himself. It would be extremely embarrassing — to him and the embassy, who would regard it as a diplomatic slight — if he got caught, so he’ll have to act carefully. If anything goes wrong, his career will hit a dead end. But Billy is confident; he doesn’t need the training of a Special Agent to plant a paltry bug in some house. He has watched all eight seasons of
‘24’
— twice — and learnt more from that than at the Academy.

For the next half hour or so, he reads the day’s newspaper then turns his attention back to his desktop. A new mail has arrived. From his buddy at Quantico, he notices with anticipation, and it includes an attachment. He opens the mail and scans the brief note.

Hi there, Billy boy! How’s Phnom Penh and the girls? Blah blah... Attached the file of your target — what are you working on at the moment, seems like you’re into some heavy duty stuff? Blah blah... All the best, yours, Frank
.

He downloads the file into one of his secure folders and opens it. A photograph of the girl accompanying Phirun at breakfast appears on screen. Her hair is shorter in this dated shot and she looks younger naturally, but he can clearly recognise her features — the full lips, purposeful dark brown eyes and, most distinctively of all, the birthmark on her right cheek. She sort of reminds Billy of one of his favourite girls in Handsome Man bar in Street 104.

According to the attached report, she was born a Cambodian refugee in 1980, in an Australian detention centre — and her birth name was Farina Ahmad.

What the hell? Billy puzzles, that’s not a Khmer name.

A footnote refers to an annex of the report that contains a copy of her official birth registration. At the time of birth, her mother separated from her father and was subsequently incarcerated in a refugee detention centre two months before Farina Ahmad’s birth. Her parents were both Cambodian Muslims from the Cham minority group, an ethnic tribe singled out for particularly brutal repression by the Khmer Rouge regime.

“Okay...” Billy mumbles, “... that explains it.”

Her father Karim and brother Sokry stayed behind in Cambodia and both disappeared, presumed dead. Her mother died in Australia in 1996, leaving the then 16-year-old Farina on her own. A copy of her mother’s death certificate was included in the annex. Apart from some school registration documents, few other records covering her adolescence and teenage years had been recovered. What was known is that she had been educated in Australian schools and officially changed her name to Merrilee. She was fluent in English, Western Cham, Khmer and Arabic. From her early twenties onwards, she was reportedly involved with extreme Islamic groups based in Melbourne.

Billy is growing increasingly interested. He walks to the minibar in his office out of which he takes a Coke. He pops open the can and gulps down half of it before returning to his seat. On his way back, he grabs the stereo remote and turns off Johnny Cash, who was busy singing
Man in Black
in that inimitable dusky tone. Then he belches loudly and continues reading.

According to Australian intelligence, Merrilee Ahmad became heavily influenced by radical Lebanese Wahhabi hardliners. Despite her ethnic background of Cambodian Cham Muslim — generally known for their peaceful tolerance — as a young, orphaned refugee she must have been an easy target while a youngster in straight-talking Australia. At one stage she was believed to have been attending and receiving tutelage at certain ultraconservative mosques. The report mentions the eyewitness account of an Australian informant who had infiltrated al-Ansar, an extremist group of Jihadis also based in Melbourne, now closed down by Australian security services. This informant identified Merrilee as a leading member of an as-yet-unknown faction of Hezbollah. The report’s most recent reference to her movement was as boarding an Emirates flight to Lebanon via Dubai, two weeks after the informant had squealed. She had been on Australian intelligence’s watch list ever since.

Billy scratches his head. He thought that that Belgian Colonel’s file had made complicated reading but this girl’s was enough to cause a goddamn migraine. He finds another file photo of Merrilee. It’s not very clear, obviously taken at long-range, and shows her in the company of two men, standing on a street beside a cream-coloured Mercedes. The accompanying caption sources the picture as being taken in Beirut. The men are Jamil el Maniacky, a leading Hezbollah operative, and Bakri el Merdah, the personal secretary of Sheikh Mohammed Hussein Fadlallah, Hezbollah’s spiritual leader. The note further states that Merrilee Ahmad is believed to be emerging as a major player in the Hezbollah organisation. A femme fatale; with looks that could kill, presumably among other things.

“Hoooly shit!” Billy pronounces. “This ain’t no girl scout, this is serious terrorist pussy all over the goddamn place!” Despite the complicated maze of connections between the disparate organisations and their allegiance-shifting members, for Billy things are starting to become pretty goddamn clear now. That broad is part of Hezbollah. Maybe not al Qaeda, but whatever — they’re all goddamn terrorists, anyway. This Phirun guy is working either for her or with her. They’re not having breakfast together simply to kill the morning hunger pangs, that’s for sure; Billy ain’t no fool. And this Colonel Peeters is clearly also involved — he’s probably done a deal with them. And whether that Colonel’s a terrorist or not, Billy doesn’t care a slimy sliver of shit. You’re either with us or against us, he thinks, not for the first time. And as far as he’s concerned the Colonel is now the confirmed enemy.

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.

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!”

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.