Phnom Penh Express (20 page)

The boy is visibly relieved.

“No, nobody has turned up. I don’t know how else to find out. I’m sorry
bong.”

***

Phirun and Merrilee are finally having their long-awaited drink on the balcony of the Equator bar, overlooking the human traffic traversing Street 278. Phirun is sipping a dark Leffe beer and Merrilee a house cocktail called ‘Amnesia’.

“Thanks for your help today,” Phirun tells her. “You were quite persistent.”

“Yeah. I guess I overreacted a little,” she confesses. “I just wanted to get out of that place as quickly as possible and have a drink. After all, it’s Friday night.”

Merrilee looks gloomily into her glass. She should have considered the glaring possibility — of a simple mix-up by an incompetent clerk, an error on the part of the courier company — beforehand. She’s been on the wrong track the whole time. That means she can also scrap Nina from her hit-list. That leaves her with not much; certainly no concrete names, she realises. But her priority remains unchanged: to identify and eliminate whichever Israeli woman Driekamp had screamed while under interrogation.

She glances at Phirun who’s watching the multifarious comings and goings below.

If The House has nothing to do with all of this, what was that Belgian Colonel doing in there yesterday morning? Coincidence? Or has he, too, been led up the garden path, just like her, Merrilee wonders. In any case, it’s not the Colonel she’s after, it’s the Israeli. But if he’s fighting a turf war, the Colonel should be able to lead her to her target, she decides.

“How’s your amnesia?” Phirun asks.

“I can’t remember,” she jests, waking from her maze of half-formed thoughts. She smiles warmly at Phirun. “Cool bar — thanks for bringing me here.”

“No worries — mate,” he smiles back.

Phirun stands up from his barstool. “
Les toilettes...,”
he exclaims. “Please guard my vintage Leffe with your life.”

Merrilee returns to her interior dialogue. Her instructions are clear. She’d do whatever it takes to locate and eliminate her target and accomplish her mission. If she can’t get to that Israeli traitor directly, then she’ll have to take a little detour.

In the background, UB40’s ‘Rat in mi Kitchen’ is playing. Merrilee quietly sings along.

If I want to fix that rat then I’ll have to get to Colonel Peeters first, she concludes. And having studied the Colonel’s profile, she knew exactly how to do just that.

SHUFFLING RESTLESSLY ON the wooden bench in the stuffy Phnom Penh courtroom, Colonel Peeters is getting anxious. What’s taking the judge so long to reach a verdict? This is the second time that the trial’s final session has been postponed. The new court hearing is scheduled for 4:30
PM
. He looks at the large clock on the wall: 4:23
PM
.

The weight of the handcuffs around his wrists is starting to ache; could he end up with nerve damage from their drag? In Cambodia they still use heavy, old-fashioned welded steel cuffs, not the modern versions made of aluminium or synthetic polymers, that he himself has snapped shut on suspects many times during his career. He had pleaded ‘not guilty’ to numerous charges: of conspiracy to murder; trafficking of illegal goods; and attempting to bribe police officials. He had subsequently bribed the general prosecutor, three magistrates
and
the judge to ensure his freedom. But now doubt starts eating away at his previous confidence. The Colonel has heard enough disturbing stories about what happens behind the walls of Cambodian prisons; ghastly visions of rape, mock executions and starvation haunt him.

Shit, he thinks, keep yourself together old boy. If they think you’re breaking down it only encourages them to suck you even more dry of cash. Despite lecturing himself to keep calm, tiny sweat droplets start forming on the Colonel’s forehead. He looks at the clock again: 4:35
PM
.

Finally a bell rings and a few seconds later the Cambodian judge enters the courtroom. Order is called while the senior magistrate takes his place behind the desk and starts signing the judgement papers. The Colonel looks at his Cambodian defence lawyer who nods back at him reassuringly. The gesture does everything but reassure the Colonel. Then, all of a sudden, the judge calls for attention. He rearranges the documents in front of him, clears his throat and begins reading in Khmer. After a few sentences the Colonel hears his name being pronounced wrong, and recognises the French word
‘Belgique’
.

“What the hell is he saying?” the Colonel demands from his lawyer.

“Don’t worry, just normal procedure. He’s reading the names of the parties and the charges.”

“Then when for fuck’s sake is he gonna announce his decision?” the Colonel frets.

“He’s now reading the reasons that determine the decision of the court on each of the counts, and then he’ll move on to the enacting terms of judgment. And then...”

“What? I’ve had it! When the hell is...”

The Colonel stops himself when he hears the courtroom stirring, but when he looks to the elevated bench the judge is still reading aloud. He glares, his eyes demanding, at his lawyer who instead looks down.

“What did he say?” the Colonel demands.

“Guilty on all counts,” is his brief, subdued reply. Suddenly the lawyer raises his hand to indicate the Colonel to be silent. “He’s reading the sentence,” he mumbles to the open-mouthed Colonel while concentrating on the judge’s words. Then he slowly lowers his hand and looks at his client, relief flooding his entire countenance.

“My god, you’re lucky!” he exclaims, grinning. The Colonel, however, cannot escape the impression that his lawyer is deriving some sick pleasure from all this. His eyes exude an odd mixture of satisfaction and contempt.

“Tell me, then!” the Colonel demands.

The lawyer talks clearly and slowly:

“You have just been sentenced to listen to eighteen hours of Cambodian karaoke music a day, for two full weeks,” he says, studying the Colonel’s bemused face with keen interest.

“Live!” he adds a sucker, sadistically delayed punch line that makes the Colonel wince with pain.

“NOOOO!!!” the Colonel screams out loud before he wakes up bathed in cold sweat.

***

What a shitty — shitty — shitty nightmare! Colonel Peeters thinks while brushing his teeth in his hotel bathroom. He’s still half-relieved and half-shocked. Must have been some Freudian thing, he imagines, considering how much he loathes Khmer karaoke. The Colonel has travelled a lot in his life, but never at any other place on this fucked-up planet had he endured such a horrifying noise. Like a litter of cats stamped to death in a set of bagpipes. But the singing is the worst aspect — he’d never imagined human beings were capable of producing such ghastly... there are no words capable of doing justice to the Colonel’s feelings about the local music.

The Americans used blaring heavy metal as part of the breaking down process used on the so-called unlawful combatants at Guantanamo Bay, but to the Colonel’s ears that would have been akin to a champagne and caviar classical music concert on Valentine’s Day, compared to the muck here. It’s clear that no Guantanamo prison interrogators ever served in Cambodia, otherwise they wouldn’t have wasted their time with that heavy metal tripe. Or was Khmer karaoke even a step too far for Gitmo?

He slurps some water from the tap and gurgles loudly while holding his head backwards, then spits toothpaste into the white marble sink. He looks at the time: 9:55
AM
. How come he hasn’t received any news about the job yet? The elimination had been scheduled for yesterday and he should have gotten a confirmation by now. The Colonel is not a superstitious man but that nightmare left him with a creeping sense of foreboding.

He lowers his trousers and sits down on the toilet. A moment later he hears the sound of an object plunging into water, a familiar sound the Colonel had been accustomed to since toilet training with his dear, old mother. The plop of gravity, he contemplates. Such a strange force. Then his cellphone rings.

“Shit!” he curses, appropriately.

It’s lying just out of arm’s reach, forcing the Colonel to shuffle a few steps towards the end of the bathroom, dragging trousers around ankles. After he grabs his cell he shuffles back and sits down onto the seat again.

“Yeah!” he answers grumpily, panting with exertion. He listens intently to the voice a few miles into the ether.

“You WHAT?!” he shouts into the phone, followed by another plunge in the water beneath him. The Colonel’s angry barking rings loudly in the hotel’s bathroom.

***

Around the same time that Colonel Peeters is furiously flushing his toilet at the InterContinental, an enraged young woman of Middle Eastern origin is shouting angrily into her cellphone.

“You are telling me you shot the wrong guy? Are you kidding me?”

“No Miss Tza... I mean, no, miss. I mean, it wasn’t me; my contact got it wrong...”

“I don’t give a damn about your contact, I’m dealing with you! You’re telling me that you messed up, big time!” she yells in her cellphone, exasperated.

“How the hell can you fail a simple job like that?”

“It was a misunderstanding... You told us that the target would be working there alone, but there was someone else inside, too — a neighbour.”

“I don’t care if the damn Queen of England was inside, you messed up,” she hisses.

“The Queen of England...?” the voice on the other side mumbles, then adds hastily: “I can give you a discount,
bong
...”

Tzahala takes a deep breath, then speaks in an icy tone.

“I will have
you
discounted, you moron,” and smashes her phone against the wall.
“Harah!”

Tzahala immediately regrets destroying her mobile and examines it to retrieve its SIM card. She should have known; if something needs doing properly, do it yourself. Damn it! she curses inwardly. Not only has she failed, but on top of that, she’s made a fool of herself towards that Colonel. Like a real amateur.

She places the SIM card into a spare, older model and switches it on. A few seconds later the connection symbol indicates reception.

What to do now? Maybe the Colonel will regard the killing as a warning? Shooting a
neighbour
as a warning — inside his chocolate place? No, it’s obvious this was a botched job.

Tzahala walks over to her living room desk and switches on her laptop with a sigh. The most useful thing she can occupy herself with at the moment, she supposes, is studying the Colonel’s profile over again. Maybe she missed something before, however unlikely that may be; some other, subtle clue. She sips hot, black coffee, perusing the file. She’s unlikely to find anything new, of course, she’s already studied it plenty of times before. She continues sipping coffee while she clicks on the link to the file’s addenda.

It contains a number of pictures of the Colonel taken over the years: one in his Belgian
gendarmerie
uniform; another of him shaking hands with some fat guy in Holland, identified as Edwin van der Gracht. Tzahala enlarges a portrait-style photo so that the Colonel’s face fills her screen. Not a bad-looking guy for such an incredible asshole, she admits to herself — if only he’d lose that stupid fascist moustache of his.

“Moustache...,” she jolts to a shock realisation: the man leering from her screen is the same guy she had admired across the patio at breakfast only two days ago.

“The hunk from The House!” she exclaims.

She puts down her coffee and studies the Colonel’s face again, perplexed. Yes, it’s definitely him, despite his changing his looks a little. Tzahala sits back and ponders what possible advantages this discovery could bring along. Now that she can identify him, maybe she can have him removed. But then she’d better do it herself, after yesterday’s mess-up. Moreover, he’ll be even more on his guard now, no doubt. Tzahala frowns, remaining sunk in thought for a while. She empties her coffee. Then suddenly, with a determined flourish, Tzahala snaps her laptop closed. She’s just settled on a plan of action.

***

The Colonel is still fuming. He’s briskly pacing his $800 suite, occasionally stopping to slam his fist onto a table or against a closet. That shitty nightmare was simply the start of what promised to be a bad day.

“Godvermiljaar!”
he swears in his Antwerp dialect. He paid all that money to his local Muppet, only to hear that — “oh, sorry sir” — they had gone and hit the completely wrong target! The wretched imbeciles only popped one of the neighbours instead! What the hell...? There was no value for money in this monkey country — and there goes his steel reputation, the Colonel admits to himself. What now? He walks to the phone and dials room service.

“I asked for two double espressos half an hour ago, where the hell are they?” he growls into the phone, having never ordered them in the first place, and slams the receiver down.

By the time the coffees arrive, four minutes and seventeen seconds later — the Colonel timed it — he has made his decision. He wants to find out who his Israeli rivals are and get into talks with them; maybe they can strike a deal. He can only contact them indirectly, by leaving a message at The House, he concludes. He gulps down his espressos, grabs his car keys and leaves the suite.

By the time Colonel Peeters double-parks his landcruiser on the wrong side of the road in Street 240, opposite The House, the clear tropical morning is turning into a baking noon. He sits a couple of minutes in his car, scribbling a message on a piece of paper. He wants to keep his identity secret for now and hesitates before scrawling his mobile number on it. It’s a Cambodian cell number bought via punting some motodop driver five dollars. No way he can be traced via it, he reckons.

Satisfied, he gets out, walks straight into The House, up to the counter and calls over the guy who seems to be in charge.

“What’s your name?” he demands, neglecting to introduce himself.