Phnom Penh Express (21 page)

“Sophat, sir. Would you like to order something?”

“No. I want you to give this note to your boss,” the Colonel tells him, handing over the piece of paper with a ten-dollar note folded into it.

“Oh, thank you, sir, but that’s not necessary,” the young Cambodian replies, refusing the money. Then suddenly he seems to remember something.

“Oh...! Excuse me, one moment, sir,” he exclaims. “I think someone already left a note for you.”

Not for the first time that morning, the Belgian is surprised.

“What do you mean?”

Young Sophat reaches behind the counter, grabs a sealed envelope and passes it to the Colonel. Stapled on it is a picture of Peeters’ face. It’s an old shot, but his moustache has been retouched out and more hair added, coloured light brown. The result is an uncanny resemblance to his present appearance.

“Who gave this to you?” the Colonel asks sharply, “your boss?”

“My boss? No, one of the newspaper kids from outside delivered it. He asked us to give it to you if you came here. There was a twenty-dollar note with it as well. I put it in the staff’s tip box.”

“I see,” the Colonel grumbles. He stuffs the envelope in his pocket, takes back his own message and quickly leaves the café. After re-entering his car he takes the envelope out and looks again at the picture of himself glued to it.

“Amai m’n kloten,”
he mumbles in Flemish, expressing his surprise in vulgar vocabulary. “How the fuck did they find me?” He tears open the envelope and finds the same picture, but this time without any Photoshop adjustments. Instead, his moustache is smeared with white correctional fluid with a local telephone number written on it.

“Yeah, yeah, funny guys! You’re overdoing the moustache thing, you smartass bastards,” he says, but deep down he’s admitting defeat on this one. Those Israelis are smarter than he had given them credit for.

***

Despite all the day’s setbacks — starting with the vivid nightmare, the failed assassination attempt, the uncovering of his true identity — Colonel Peeters is surprised to find his mood lifting back at his hotel. He’s feeling surprisingly philosophical, too. This is not the first time in his life he’s had to deal with unexpected challenges. And he’s, as ever, determined to overcome them. No use in spending the evening feeling sorry for himself. Tomorrow will be crucial, he reckons.

After he got back he called the number edged on his Tippexed moustache and a woman’s voice had relayed instructions. They’d apparently be meeting tomorrow evening at 6
PM
. She was pulling the strings and there’s not much he can do about it for now. What he needs tonight is something to cheer himself up, and the Colonel, a man of the world, knows very well where to go looking for it.

At seven he starts preparing for his night out. He undresses, then pours himself a tall glass of whisky with ice and steps into the shower. As the warm water gushes over his hairy back, the Colonel takes quick sips from the 30-year-old Glenmorangie, holding the glass in his left hand while soaping his crotch with the other. A few minutes later, still naked, he walks towards the room’s music system to which his iPod is connected. Something cheerful, he thinks, plumping for Shirley Bassey, while jettisoning an impressive fart. He downs his glass and crunches an ice cube between his molars. With music filling his suite, the Colonel starts singing along.

“Diamonds are forever...”
He picks up his underwear.

“... they are all I need to please me...”
He raises the rumpled boxers up to his nose and tentatively sniffs.

“... they can stimulate and tease me...”
Still okay, he relents, and lugs them on.

When the chorus kicks in, he lets himself fall onto the king sized bed and listens to the lyrics until the song finishes.

“All right,” he says, “time to go.”

He puts on his black combat trousers, a fresh shirt and brown leather shoes. Moments later he’s standing on Monivong Boulevard in front of the big hotel, waiting for a passing motodop to pick him up. Despite his mistrust of the local drivers, he’s decided to keep a low profile out tonight and leave his big car at the hotel. After barely thirty seconds a young motorcycle driver stops next to him.

“Hello sir, moto?”

“Yeah, to Martini’s.”

“Martini’s
baat!”

While the young Cambodian takes off with his hefty passenger balanced on the back, he glances up at the looming InterContinental. Expensive hotel, the driver thinks, he’ll charge this
barang
at least four dollars.

As they cruise through the humid Phnom Penh evening, Colonel Peeters’ thoughts flash back to his last visit to Martini’s two years ago. That night he’d returned home with two twenty-something sluts he’d banged for an hour in his hotel. Then he’d returned them to Martini’s from where he’d left with two more that had come personally recommended by the first pair. It had been a hectic but satisfying night’s work. He wonders if the establishment has changed much during his absence.

The Colonel realises too late he should have negotiated his driver’s fee in advance, but he’s determined to hang on to his good mood. After arriving in Street 95 he stuffs $2 in the breast pocket of his driver’s shirt — double the usual fee — and slaps him on the back, successfully discouraging him from asking for more.

The Colonel looks around him. Not much has changed, he thinks. The dirt road is still dirt, the whores still have dinner at makeshift noodle shacks, and the motodop drivers are half asleep with their feet up on their handlebars. Places like this belong in West Africa, he thinks, not Southeast Asia. Approaching the wide-open entrance, he fails to notice the motorcycle bearing a scantily dressed Cambodian that has followed him from his hotel.

***

Merrilee climbs off the back of the motorcycle. She knows she has to be careful. Not because of the Colonel, but of the girls inside Martini’s. Her appearance has already drawn an unusual amount of attention — and the girls are territorial. Even dressed modestly, Merrilee makes heads turn, but now, in an ultra miniskirt beneath just a slip of blouse, she stands out more than a Las Vegas billboard in a Siberian desert. Despite being unaccustomed to these damn high heels, when Merrilee strides past the herd of waiting motodop drivers she radiates the overbearing confidence of a die-hard hooker — or an overpaid foreign aid worker.

She passes through the entrance, a wide passage lined with fast-food stalls, and arrives in the open-air beer hall. Dozens of plastic tables and chairs are filled with mostly western male tourists and Asian businessmen accompanied by hordes of thin Cambodian and Vietnamese girls. A 120-inch projector screen is showing Bruce Willis save the world but the soundtrack is overpowered by Beyoncé’s
Crazy in Love
blasting from the music system’s speakers. A quarter of the male patrons are already eyeing up the spectacular newcomer; the other three-quarters haven’t noticed her yet, still engrossed in large pitchers of Angkor beer and stilted conversation with their newly acquired fiancées.

Merrilee feels the cold looks emanating from some of the regular whores, who smell competition. She ignores the men and walks over to where more food stalls are serving a mix of western grub and Asian stir-fries. After finding a small table with only one chair, she sits down and studies the sparse menu at length. Her fair-weather admirers gradually lose interest and, to Merrilee’s relief, their attention flows back to the local girlfriends-to-be.

She orders a simple noodle dish with fried strips of beef and a Coke. She’s already spotted the Colonel sitting some twenty metres away in the roof-covered area. He’s groping a girl while sipping from a mug of beer and watching a game of pool. When Merrilee’s dish arrives she starts eating the noodles with a pair of chopsticks and considers her strategy for the night.

If she doesn’t want to create a scene, she’ll have to pay off some of the girls to allow her access to the Colonel. As long as she makes it clear to them that she’s only after him and not interested in establishing a patch for herself here, she should be fine. As for the Colonel, she’ll have to be crude. From what she read, he’s got an insatiable preference for younger girls — but age and experience bring something else to the grotty, cigarette-ashed table. Plus, she’s got the advantage of undeniably better looks.

She finishes her plate and watches the fifty-year-old Belgian dismount his barstool. With the local girl trailing, he walks past the pool tables and disappears through the double blacked-out doors that lead into the attached nightclub. Hunting season has started, she thinks, standing up.

***

Colonel Peeters is sipping on his eighth Angkor beer inside the shadowy, stuffy club. He’s propped at the bar, two young girls massaging his shoulders. Boredom is starting to engulf him while he’s watching the crowd shake their booties on the dance floor a couple of metres away. Most are Cambodian and Vietnamese girls, who all seem to be having a good time, moving enthusiastically to the beat and trying the latest Channel V dance moves. It’s more like a junior high school party than a hooker joint tonight, the Colonel muses.

Along the walls, amid the gloom, are single rows of square tables and chairs on which male customers sit with their girlfriend for the night, or alone but evaluating the talent undulating on the floor. Only a few middle-aged white men and the odd Korean businessman are dancing badly among the gaggle of girls and women, sweating profusely and painfully dismissive of anything resembling a sense of rhythm. Yes, the Colonel is officially bored. This R&B stuff they keep playing is not his thing at all; maybe he should call it a night and take a couple of sluts back, he thinks.

Then, as if he’d bribed the otherwise clueless DJ, there’s a familiar intro and, yes, one of the Colonel’s all-time favourite tunes fills the air.

“Macarena,” he exclaims. “Yes!”

He finishes his beer with an unsteady swig that spills half on his white shirt, and jumps off his barstool to join the dancing crowd. Immediately three girls surround him and thrust their slim bodies rhythmically against the new dancing
barang
.

They all want me, they can’t have me, so they come and dance beside me...

He is now sandwiched in between four girls; two in front and two behind him. It gets better by the second, he thinks.

Move with me, chant with me, and if you’re good, I’ll take you home with me...

He places his arms forward, palms down, right arm, then left. The girls join in. He puts his right hand on his left shoulder, then his left on the right, then on the back of his head. Right first then left... the Colonel’s brain instructs him with mechanical discipline. After all, he’s a military man. The girls follow — even Channel V plays the Macarena music video occasionally. The Colonel then puts his right hand on his left hip, crossing his arms and finishing the routine with a little jump and a pelvic rotation of 90 degrees:
Eeeeeeh macarena!
the speakers blast. He freezes.

The music continues but the Colonel can’t move. He’s staring straight at the most sexy, provocative, slutty, juicy creature he’s ever seen in Phnom Penh. What the fuck...! he thinks, but she smiles at him flicking the tip of her tongue along her upper lip while brushing her lower body against his, to the rhythm of the music. The Colonel slowly starts dancing again but his movements are no longer following the tune; they’re like those of a malfunctioning robot. The girl turns her back to him and slides her perfectly shaped bum in circular movements against the increasingly horny Colonel’s crotch. This is almost too much for him to bear: Peeters hasn’t had sex since arriving in Cambodia and is desperate to make up for lost time. The song is nearing its end and by the moment of the final, blared
Eeeeeeh macarena
, another, more personal blast occurs. Almost in sync with the song’s finishing line, he ejaculates in what to him feels like the kind of explosion that would make the heads of both North Korea and Iran sick with jealousy. The girl in front of him turns around and with one swift movement reaches between the Colonel’s legs and squeezes his still rock hard penis through his wet trousers.

“Oooh, already!” she exclaims and purses her lips in mock disappointment like a schoolmistress would admonish a naughty little boy. “Go home?” she asks innocently. Before the Colonel can say one word she flings herself around his neck and whispers in his ear, “I
njam njam
you?”

***

The decision had been instantaneous. When the Colonel steps out of the shower he feels refreshed and ready for action. He had almost come a second time on the way home, seated on the back of a motodop with the girl behind him, one of her hands frolicking between his legs. Fortunately, that time he’d been able to restrain himself. With a towel wrapped around his waist he walks to the minibar, where the girl is fixing a whisky on the rocks. Holding the glass in one hand, she turns round, bends forward and playfully pulls back one part of the towel, making the Colonel’s stiff member spring out.

“Oooh, very big!” she laughs, handing him the whisky.

“You bet, honey,” the Colonel retorts cheerfully. “Mine’s like toothpaste: easy to get out, hard to get back in.”

He sips from the glass and reaches out for the girl, who skilfully avoids him while slapping him playfully on his rear.

“I first go shower now,” she says, walking to the bathroom.

“No need for shower. You come here!” the Colonel demands.

The girl confidently walks up to the Colonel, grabs his stiff member, leads him to the giant bed and pushes him down. She looks him sternly in the eye.

“I go shower now. First clean pussy. You drink whisky.” To kill any potential objections from the Colonel, she adds, “No shower, no
njam njam!”

“Yeah, okay — but hurry up,” the Colonel gives in. The touch of the girl’s slender hand around his dick had reminded him who was in control at this juncture in proceedings. Not for long, though...

On her way to the bathroom, the girl glances over her shoulder and sees the Colonel down his whisky and stretch out on the bed.