The Deceivers (19 page)

“That's insane.”

“Yes, in a sense people like Pol Pot who belonged in an asylum for the criminally insane were running the asylum. Only in this case, it encompassed an entire country.”

He explained that the plan was to take the country back to an agrarian culture in which people grew their own food and made their own clothes. I'd heard some of the horror story before, but pretended it was all new to me.

“You saw our wonderful museum,” Nol said. “It was not spared by the Khmer Rouge. The museum was closed and looted, the director and many staff members murdered. Once it took on an abandoned state, not only the exhibits but the building itself degenerated. It was not that long ago that our biggest problem besides faulty electric wiring was bat dung.”

The silver-colored central building was tall, perhaps eight or ten stories high. As we came up to it I realized it was more a monument than a building. Inside were tiers of glass cases, rising one above the other, containing thousands of skulls.

You could reach out and touch the skulls.

“Many of them show how the killing was done,” Nol said. He pointed at signs of damage to skulls. “That one was smashed by a club, that one, too; this one was shot—”

I spun around and walked out.

He came out behind me and I apologized.

He shook his head. “Many people have the same reaction. To suddenly see thousands of skulls, realizing that these were people, it's a shock.”

“Why do they display such things?”

“So that we remember. We did this. Cambodians did it to other Cambodians. We are guilty, even those of us who are victims because we let it happen. To make sure it never happens again, we must never forget it.”

We walked toward craterlike depressions with signs indicating they were mass graves. Small mounds of bleached bones were stacked in front of the signs.

“You can find bones almost anywhere around here where you dig,” he said. He pointed at small pieces of cloth sticking out from the ground. “Pieces of clothing of people buried.”

We paused by a large tree with a sign written in Cambodian and English. It said, “
CHANKIRI TREE AGAINST WHICH EXECUTIONERS BEAT CHILDREN
.”

I could see the heads of rusty old nails. “Jesus. Did they…?”

“Yes. The heads of children were bashed against the tree. The nails helped kill them. If you look closely, you can see the tree bark is scarred from the blows.”

“But how could they kill children?”

“Ones that wore glasses or looked intelligent were killed. Those who cried too much because they were separated from their mothers were killed. At Tuol Sleng the guards kept a meticulous record of the prisoners murdered. If you visit it, you will see posted on the walls the pictures of those interrogated, tortured, and then murdered. It includes the pictures of children.”

I felt a welling up in my throat and couldn't speak. To read about this insanity in a guidebook didn't carry the impact that his voice did.

He gave a sad smile. “You have to understand. The madness knew no bounds. People were told to do evil things and knew that they would be killed if they didn't do them.”

I walked away, unable to speak.

Catching up with me, he said, “Perhaps I should not have asked you here. Many of my own people won't visit the Killing Fields. They believe the spirits of the victims are unsettled because of the way they died.”

“I'm only a visitor. I know it's personal to you, but it's new and shocking to me.”

“Yes. Very personal. I come here to visit my family.”

I wondered if he came here thinking he could find the bones of his wife and father. I changed the subject.

“I am really puzzled by a couple of things. Maybe you can explain. Don't you find it strange that the Siva was chosen to be duplicated? I mean, why a major piece like that?”

He shrugged. “Perhaps it would sell for so much more than other pieces. Few pieces are of the caliber of the Siva. And I understand that it was mostly an accident that the piece was exposed as a forgery. The pieces in our museum are not as well known as those in the large museums in places like Paris and New York.”

“True, but there's still a much higher risk of exposure because it
is
a museum piece. It just doesn't make sense to me. The forger would have had to work months on the piece. There must be an organization in place to market something this valuable.”

“I don't have an explanation for you. Perhaps there is as much madness among art criminals as the Khmer Rouge.”

I hadn't come out and said expressly that I was investigating the looting of Khmer art, but I was certain Nol had reached that assumption when we first spoke at the museum. Some things were better left unsaid.

“Nol, there's another point, too, one that you must have some knowledge of. A forger could not have made a precise duplicate of the Siva from photographs.”

He met my statement with an impassive face.

“You know what I mean?” I asked. “It's not possible for someone to make an exact duplicate that would get by experts without examining the real Siva at great length. Don't you agree? The forgery had to be perfect, not varying in even the tiniest detail.”

No change in his stoic features. I hated backing him into a corner.

“Nol, I don't see how the piece could be duplicated without the forger having access to the piece in the museum. I can't see the person just working from photographs or dropping by once in a while to get a passing look. Unless someone in the museum is the forger.”

That thought just struck me, but I had no reason to say it.

He pursed his lips as we walked in silence to the main gate.

When we stopped in front of the entrance, I gave him a hug. “I'm sorry. I think I've inadvertently brought some bad things into your life.”

“Your intent is to help my country. I understand that.” He looked around again before he spoke. “I can recommend a guide for your visit to Angkor.”

“That would be nice.”

“Bourey.” He spelled it for me and pronounced it
boo ree.

“It would be better if you did not mention this to others. It would not be proper for a museum employee to recommend a guide. You understand? Mention it to no one.”

I understood from his confidential tone that keeping the name to myself had nothing to do with museum rules, but I kept my face blank.

As I was walking away, he spoke my name softly.

“Do you recall seeing a sword in a glass case in the museum?”

“Yes, I think so.”

“It's an executioner's sword,” he said. “Do you know about
srangapen
?”

I shook my head. “I've never heard the word.”

“The traditional Khmer execution involved a ceremonial dance performed by the executioner. We call it
srangapen.
The victim would be blindfolded and forced to kneel beside an open pit. The executioner would dance beside him, shuffling his feet so that the victim knew exactly where he was at and knew that as long as the dance went on, he would not be killed. As the victim followed the movements with his ears, believing he was safe for the moment because the dance was still going on, another executioner chopped off his head.”

The curator gave me a sad, lonely look.

“That is often how it is in my country. The blow often comes from an unexpected direction when you believe things are safe.”

I nodded my thanks and left.

The story gave me the willies. And I felt sorry for Nol. I lived in a country where I could travel over three thousand miles coast to coast and not have to worry about anything except the price of gas and whether the nearest fast-food restaurant still used trans fats. He probably didn't know when he arrived at work that morning whether there would be political upheaval by lunchtime.

The story about the sword had been a warning, of course. A warning about whom? Chantrea had introduced us. Nol might know that Prince Ranar had me watched. He might also have been ordered to report our museum discussion to Ranar. And Nol had more to say. He just wasn't ready to say it.

I wondered what piece Bourey would add to the puzzle.

19

I took a quick shower to wash off some of the day's heat, then had something to eat. Too antsy to sit still, I decided to pay a visit to the city's most famous location for forgeries.

I felt pressured to get information for Ranar. So far all I had gotten from him was money to cover my expenses. Time was running out and I needed some solid facts and a progress payment.

The Russian Market, properly called the Toul Tom Pong, was located away from usual tourist areas but still attracted plenty of tourists. At least that's what my guidebook said.

I got instructions from Pho, the concierge. It turned out Sinn's wasn't in the market, but nearby. He offered to get a regular taxi for me. This time I let him do it. I'd already told Ranar I was going to check out the market.

I slipped a twenty-dollar bill into his hand. “Tell the taxi driver to let me off at the main entrance to the market. I'll get to Sinn's myself. Pho, when I take a taxi, I want to make sure that the driver is reliable and discreet. Sometimes business competitors like to know where I go and I don't want them to.”

Pho gave me a knowing nod as I followed him outside. Three taxi drivers were waiting. He bypassed the first two and took me to the third one.

“This driver is more honest than those two,” he whispered. “His name is Samnang. He speaks some English.”

He spoke to Samnang in Cambodian, then said to me, “I have made sure the fare is arranged. You can pay him as little as two dollars, but if you feel he warrants it, give him more.”

My driver seemed like a likable fellow with a nice smile as he weaved through the heavily congested traffic of cars, motos, and bicycles with more caution than other drivers I'd seen.

We headed south on Monivong Boulevard away from the downtown business area and into more residential and industrial parts of the city. He took a turn on Mao Tse-tung Boulevard and down a dusty, potholed street to the market.

The main building was an exotic temple-looking dome with lower wings extending out. An array of open shops under umbrellas near the main entrance crowded the street like jungle foliage.

I asked Samnang if he wouldn't mind picking me up in an hour. I figured that would give me plenty of time to check out the market. To make sure he came back, I gave him ten dollars and told him he'd get another ten.

The covered market was larger than I expected. The interior had long rows of stalls, easily over a hundred. The plan of organization appeared to be chaos, though major merchandise categories—food, motorcycle parts, clothes, stoneware, and porcelain—were generally grouped together.

Kirk was right about the variety. You could find everything there: electronic goods, clothes, shoes, jewelry, silks, handbags, woodcarvings, CDs, DVDs, antiques, pottery. Some stalls sold fake items but you could also find real designer brand names that cost a fraction of what you'd pay in department stores because the items had flaws, some very minor.

I passed by one stall that had jars and jars of weird-looking liquids with unidentifiable objects in them, no doubt some medicinal herb concoctions, some of which looked pretty disgusting. Strange odors hit my nostrils as I walked by the place.

Tourists crowded everywhere, bargaining on everything. It was considered a mandatory thing to do at the stalls. You never paid the full price for anything and the people who were good at it were usually more vocal and persuasive. The thought of culture-ugly Bullock haggling with these poor people was a disgusting image.

I passed through several antiquity stalls that sold fakes. It was obvious tourist junk, nothing good enough to tempt me to leave my name and hotel number. At the last stall, the finishes on several of the pieces still looked fresh and too clean, as if they had recently been painted despite the sign that said “Antiquities.” Trying to be discreet, I picked up a Buddha and carefully scratched my fingernail on the finish when the shopkeeper wasn't looking. The paint came right off.

Amazing how easily you could fool an unsuspecting tourist who didn't know anything about art. They could buy what was presented as a five-hundred-year-old sandstone Buddha, with a written guarantee of authenticity, only to find out later it had been made only weeks before.

The shopkeeper gave me several “hellos” when he finished selling a Buddha to a tourist.

“I'm looking for a real antique, not tourist stuff.”

He stared at me as if I had said something insulting. “All pieces real,” he said in broken English.

“Do you have something really special?”

He bobbed his head and picked up a bronze statue with a greenish-brown patina. “This special. Very old.”

I controlled myself from telling him it was an obvious fake. He was lying, of course, thinking I was just an innocent tourist who knew nothing about antiques, but it was all a game and it would be rude for me to have said so.

He had picked up the piece I'd scratched.

“For you, two hundred.”

“No, I'd like something
really
old.”

He had some good copies of Khmer antiquities, but nothing that pinged real to me. I was just testing the waters, to see if he'd reach behind the counter and pull out an authentic artifact.

He shook his head and insisted that the item he had in his hand was a genuine antiquity.

I had read that art dealers in Cambodia were starting to be prosecuted by the government and the police, so some of them were being more careful of what they sold and to whom. Or maybe he didn't really have any real valuable pieces.

I thanked him and moved on. I went out an exit and onto the street. According to Pho's instructions, Sinn's shop should be across the street and down less than a block. Ahead I saw two familiar figures. I quickly veered around a shop that sold necklaces made out of wood. Hiding behind a corner of the canvas overhang, I took another look.