Phnom Penh Express (5 page)

And it had been a roaring success, thanks partly to the international contacts he had amassed, and partly to the powerful politicians and other public dignitaries, that he had eating out of his hand. Some he had firmly by the balls. Becoming a Lieutenant-Colonel hadn’t been easy, but once he’d got there, it granted him access to a wealth of information that had proved most useful.

The ship moves out of sight and the Colonel’s gaze absently wanders to the left bank of Antwerp, across the river. Rather dull, he thinks, observing the characterless apartment buildings. He should have bought a penthouse on the other side, looking out over
this
side, not the other fucking way around, he realises, cursing himself. The medieval castle, the wooden ships in the old, disused docks, the Gothic cathedral towering a hundred metres over the city — they’re all within five minutes walking distance from his flat, but he can’t see them. Except for a sliver of the castle but he’s not so hot on medieval shit, he prefers the cathedral. It reminds him of the first blowjob he received from some schoolgirl behind one of the side altars when he was a choir boy. Now, if he wants a sighter of the place of worship, he has to walk up to his massive roof terrace where he can see everything. Only, it sucks when it rains. And in Belgium it always does.

The Thai girl has made herself some instant noodles and sits slurping them while watching an action movie on the enormous widescreen of Colonel Peeters’ home entertainment system.

“Turn down the goddamn TV,” the Colonel shouts at her, “I’m thinking!”

The girl smiles at him innocently.

“No TV?” she asks, suddenly looking immensely depressed, as if she had been ordered to amputate both of her legs.

“Yes, no TV,” the Colonel replies, “go watch TV in bedroom!”

The girl, who seemed to have forgotten the other four TVs in the penthouse apartment, is reanimated.

“Me love you always,” she concludes, and disappears.

The Colonel returns to his thoughts. It had taken a lot of effort and time to establish the diamond smuggling operation. First, he had founded CPSYBT Diamonds, standing for ‘Colonel Peeters Screws You Big Time’. He had almost laughed himself sick about that one.

Then his company bought a hundred per cent of the mining interests of an obscure, barely profitable diamond mining company in Tanzania. Miraculously, before long, the mine started to discover large diamond deposits. At least, on paper, because ninety per cent of the stones sold in Antwerp by CPSYBT really came from rebel leaders in Sierra Leone and Angola, paid for with the Colonel’s drug money. But when in 2003 the international Kimberley Agreement came into force, designed to prevent the buying and selling of blood diamonds, his entire money laundering operation suddenly started to shake on its foundations. Selling stones on the official Antwerp circuit became increasingly difficult. The risk of detection, which in turn could blow the cover of his heroin trafficking business, was too high.

However, as the bloody conflicts in Sierra Leone and Angola intensified, it became harder for the rebels to trade their illegal diamonds for weapons. Black market prices plummeted and for the Colonel this was too good an opportunity to pass by. He quickly set up a new company, to separate the blood diamond trafficking from the rest of his business, and continued to smuggle stones to Antwerp. There, he had them cut, polished and smuggled into Cambodia through convenient middlemen who all worked exclusively for him, unofficially, of course.

Colonel Peeters enters his study, closing the door behind him. He sits behind his enormous desk crafted from a single piece of endangered
Afzelia xylocarpa
, a beautiful reddish timber he had ordered from Cambodia. That is what’s great about that country: you can get anything you like, under just two conditions: it has to exist and you have to have money. Illegal logging being rampant in Southeast Asia, the Colonel had been quick to custom-order the desk. He caresses the priceless
Beng
wood, as Khmers call it, and lets his fingers rest on a rectangular box of Arawak King cigars. He takes one out, places it between his teeth and lights it. While the $125 piece is slowly going up in smoke, Colonel Peeters’ thoughts wander back to Cambodia.

He reminisces how, on one of his countless forays to the bars and strip clubs of Thailand, he had made his first brief side-trip to Phnom Penh. He had heard some great stories about the place — some of them conflicting — but, nevertheless, interesting enough to justify researching them. His time investment had paid off — even before he boarded the plane back to Bangkok, Colonel Peeters had found a neat solution to his little blood diamond problem.

Through a contact in Thailand, he had met half of the Cambodian people that mattered during his three-day visit; all top business people and government officials, who are usually one and the same anyway. He was astounded by the level of duplicity in the country. It made Belgium look honest; no mean feat. And they all were so blasé about it, as if it were one big, fun game of Monopoly. It was true what they had told him: you can buy anything in Cambodia. And prices weren’t nearly as exorbitant as he had expected. On the contrary: a simple contract killing could cost less than a few hundred bucks, depending on the target and suchlike. Bribing a judge would come at between $1,000 and $100,000; again depending on your case. If the other party also had money, prices would go up, but that was normal free-market logic. Equally important and key to his venture was that almost anything could be smuggled over the border into neighbouring Thailand, especially concealed stones.

The Colonel takes a final puff of his cigar and then crushes it into his antique jade ashtray. His worries are distracting him from enjoying the smoke. Should he go to Cambodia himself?

The network was perfect. With eighty per cent of the world’s rough diamonds passing through Antwerp, and his army of connections in Belgium, the port city was an ideal base to have his steady supply of blood diamonds cut and polished with minimal risk. Whatever risk existed was tied up in the sales part of it, and after the Kimberley Agreement, that risk had become too big in Belgium. On the other side, Thailand had become the sixth largest diamond-consuming country in the world. However, smuggling straight into Thailand was too risky, whereas in Cambodia, where even rabies-infected street dogs could probably be bribed into not biting you, it would be a piece of cake. Moreover, Cambodia would create that extra layer of complexity required to discourage any smartass tax inspector of even thinking of starting an enquiry.

Sometimes the Colonel himself was totally confused about the complex web of companies, subsidiaries, sub-subsidiaries, partnerships and joint ventures that he had created across both continents. He even had constructed a NGO in Phnom Penh, ‘Save the Needy’, acting as an intermediary between a local sub-subsidiary and a semi-legal joint venture between a company registered in Hong Kong and a Thai casino on Cambodian territory, near Pailin. It certainly caused the occasional headache, having to remember who the fuck was doing what. But it was worth it. He had never heard of Belgian tax inspectors with sufficient budgets to bribe Cambodian officials into cooperating with a fraud investigation. And in the very unlikely event that something like that happened, the Colonel would simply raise the stakes.

With the stones already sorted, cut and polished in Antwerp, it would be far harder for anyone to discover their true origin, in case some Thai buyer asked questions which they rarely did. In that country where making perfect counterfeit copies of designer items is a national pride — even Prada can’t distinguish anymore their original handbags from the fakes on offer in Bangkok — it would be a simple formality to have counterfeit Kimberley Certificates made to order.

Colonel Peeters had been right, as usual. His operations were flourishing beyond even his heightened expectations. In terms of yearly turnover, his blood diamond venture was starting to equal his heroin gig. But now a bunch of Israeli fuckers had the fantastic idea to undercut him in his own, well-established Cambodian market. Who the hell did they think they were? The fucking chosen people from the fucking chosen land?

Colonel Peeters is growing more irritated by the minute. The more he thinks about the whole shebang, the madder he gets. He suddenly springs up and walks towards a wooden closet built into one of the facing walls, opens it and takes out his former police hat. He puts it on, looks sternly into the mirror inside the closet door and salutes twice in rapid succession.

His decision is made — a visit to Cambodia is nigh.

PHIRUN CONSIDERS ORDERING another of his favourite Leffe beers. That would make it his third since he entered the bar forty minutes ago. It’s a new place near work that he walked in at random, and when he saw his preferred beer listed on the blackboard, he didn’t have to think twice before sitting down at the counter. A voice in his head tells him to move on — there’s no chance he’ll meet a nice girl in this empty bar. But another wants to stay for the Leffe which he’s never seen here before. It may be the only local source and he should take advantage of that.

For the first time since he moved to Cambodia six months ago, a sickly sweet rush of nostalgia overwhelms him. It must have been triggered by the taste of the cold Belgian ale, he reckons, and his thoughts wander back to Antwerp where he grew up. He didn’t have too much trouble meeting girls in bars there, but all his encounters with the opposite sex ended up in catastrophes. It was all too complicated. On the other hand, his limited experience with Cambodians girls so far hasn’t proved much better. Phnom Penh’s nightlife seems to be dominated by admittedly attractive twenty-somethings, but usually, when trying to strike up conversation with them, he plunges into immense boredom after about ten minutes. What the hell is wrong with me, anyway? he wonders self-indulgently.

“Another Leffe please,” he asks the barman.

Beer 3: Girls 0, Phirun thinks. Then his mind drifts back to his visits to the government officials three days ago, and the strange telephone calls the day after. He still can’t make sense of what happened.

First there were the visits themselves, which could hardly be deemed a success. The government officials had accepted his chocolate gift boxes — not doing so would have been too confrontational — but Phirun had sensed that those bureaucrats weren’t impressed. He ought to have been more surprised that, in their bountiful generosity, they had even granted him any of their precious time in the first place, in between gambling and running their private businesses. They probably had expected him to pay his ‘facilitation money’, Phirun speculates. Or maybe they thought this Khmer from abroad might be well connected or rich. Or he might be both. How great their disappointment must have been when, after the initial exchange of respectful pleasantries, they realised that all he was bringing them was a pathetic box of chocolates. Such a thing could have been expected from a naïve
barang
, perhaps, but not from a Khmer, even one from abroad. Without exception, they had all insinuated that if he wanted to get the necessary paperwork and licences processed this decade, they expected something far more substantial than a box of stupid chocolates. One of them, the highest in ranking, had been so indignant that he even didn’t bother employing the usual euphemisms.

“My Lexus doesn’t run on chocolates, sir,” had been his sarcastic response.

Phirun addressed him with
‘Samdech’
, the Khmer equivalent of ‘His Excellency’, a conventional, respectful title for high-ranking officials. Sometimes, the more corrupt the official, the more respectful the title, Phirun thinks.

“Yes, my Excellency. Of course, I understand, my Excellency,” he replied with a couple of
wais
, greeting in the customary way, pressing his palms together near his head and bowing while avoiding eye contact, both crucial signs of acknowledging the other’s superiority. He remembered observing similar behaviour on ‘Animal Planet’.

To no avail, as five minutes later Phirun found himself out of the air-conditioned office and in the blasting heat of a busy Phnom Penh street. He wondered if his visit had not made the situation worse than it already was.

Phirun takes a long draw from his new Leffe. He had returned home, worrying about losing his job. Somehow he’d have to convince Nina to give in to the officials’ demands, but he knew that she had started her venture on a very tight budget and excessive bribes would financially torpedo the project. Try to explain that to their Excellencies. They’d rather let his business go bankrupt and receive no bribes at all than lower the expected tariff and hence lose face.

Phirun feels the beer taking effect on him. A little laugh escapes his mouth. The barman glances up briefly then turns back to watching Fashion Week on CNN. Phirun follows the barman’s gaze and stares intently at a dozen long-legged women striding a catwalk. His eyes wander the bar again — still no girls around aside from the models on the TV screen.

He takes another swig of beer and recalls the phone conversations the day after his disastrous visits. First Nina had called. When he read her name on the little screen, he had thought ‘time to face the music’.

“Phirun! What the hell have you done to those officials?” Nina’s loud voice thundered out of his cellphone.

Oh shit, he thought, they must have taken the presents as a grave insult.

“I’ve received phone calls from two different Excellencies,” Nina continued, “begging me to forgive them for the paperwork delay! One of them sent his deputy to The House to hand-deliver my new licence. He just left. What on earth happened?”

Phirun hadn’t been sure if Nina was kidding him. “Huh?” was all he managed to say. She would not have joked if her business was about to go bust, though.

“The other guy, I couldn’t understand him that well, but I think he was some tax office director. He said something about a special tax exemption and something about his wife too. Sounded confusing but overall very positive. He even invited me to his villa for dinner with his family, can you believe that?”