Black heart, p.41
Black Heart, page 41
of perfumey jasmine tea. It was as he had remembered
Shanghai cooking at its best.
AfWward, he wandered the streets, soaking in the jabber of ;rant%ese, the blaring of horns, snatches of music bursting forth JJ"001 doorways to nightclubs as he passed or where doors were °P5"ed for arriving patrons.
. He ducked into one of these, searched out a public telephone ln th* dimness. He was near the coatcheck room. The girl there Smile
* feminine voice answered after the fourth ring.
.Is Mizo there, please?' He said in Cantonese. .MJ *h afraid not.' The voice was light, airy, definitely Chinese.
*V I ask who is calling?' ,.
. , Tr*cy gave her his name. 'When you speak to Mizo, tell mm
S.Tthe son followin g in his father's footsteps.' th l ^o not understand.' The feminine voice was guarded now,
^ '^htness gone.
.^rhaps not,' Tracy said. You will give Mizo *e message. ^hen I see him.' The voice had turned coW with initiative gonev
«~^y business is most urgent.'
,4"Viat is too bad.' , lnW the
m TK>O bad for Mizo. In precisely five days I plan to btow mait> vault on the Bank of Shanghai. I'll do it with or w.tn
384
I
his help but in any event it will be Mizo who will get the publicity ... doubly so if I fail.'
He heard the sharp indrawn breath. 'Will you please hold a moment. There is someone at the door.'
Tracy watched the coatcheck girl. She was a slim, moonfaced Chinese with her glossy blue-blue hair in an elegant bun. She knew how to move. She saw him watching her, put one long-nailed forefinger to her lips, pressing inward for a moment, then turning the finger pad outward, extending it towards him. He saw the faint coral blush of her lipstick smear there.
'Mr Richter, are you still there?'
He said he was.
'My apologies for that delay.' The voice had changed tenor once again, revealing as many colours as a chameleon. Now it had softened, even seemed sensual. 'It happens I was able to take a quick peek at Mr Mizo's appointment book. He does have a bit of time tomorrow. Twelve-thirty. Do you know where the Jockey Club is?'
Tracy said he did, he would be there. They hung up without another word being spoken.
The Royal Hong Kongjockey Club lay along Stubbs Road, built into the eastern face of Mt Nicolson. The two-building high-rise was flanked by the race course one of two the club maintained - and by a tarmacked garage. It was not a particularly pretty section of the island as it was surrounded by undistinguished apartment houses almost all the way to the bay.
Here might be the true power in the Colony for, as many knowledgeable residents pointed out, it was the club and its 700 members who controlled all horse racing and the government lotteries, the only legally sanctioned forms of gambling allowed m Hong Kong. All charites here, Tracy knew, were served by income from the club as well as much of the governmental mancing, through a betting tax and a healthy cut from the lotteries. His Excellency, the Governor of Hong Kong, might
e the titular ruler in the Colony but the Jockey Club was the "alpower behind the office.
racy was driven by jeep further up the mountain. From
B.H..H
385
there he was directed to the roof of the Jockey Club's stables where he found a pair of fenced-in exercise yards for the club's
400 racehorses. It was not surprising. The Colony's mountainous terrain made flat space difficult to find. Here, rooftops had
to suffice.
Tracy emerged into the hot stifling sunshine, moving along the curving walkway to the left. The smell of horse was strong. Barechested handlers led sleek muscled horses in a clockwise direction around the longer outer track as well as the inner one. Across the way was the apartment building reserved for the
stables' personnel.
Two people stood against the railing further along. They watched a particular stallion moving in the outer ring. Both were Oriental, the man, who was closer to Tracy, was short and squat with the enormous bunched-muscled shoulders of a wrestler and a head as large as a football, deeper than it was high. As Tracy approached, he became convinced that the man was not Chinese at all. Hong Kong held many Chinese of different origins: Chiuchows from Swatow on the mainland, Tibetans, Mongols, Chinese Muslims, Turkistanis as well as refugees from Peking and Shantung. All might be considered Chinese in this community though all differed considerably in physical terms as well as philosophical and even religious and cultural. This man was none of these.
He was, Tracy now believed, Japanese. That seemed odd, even singular, and Tracy was at once suspicious. Once, before the onset of World War II, Shanghai had been the wide-open city whose officials asked no questions and interfered in no dealings no matter how nefarious. But the coming of the cornmunists had changed all that. Now it was Hong Kong which attracted those pariahs who were beyond the law. Traq thought this man might be one of those.
'Mizo-san,' he said, bowing his head before the squat man 'It is an honour to meet you.' Except for the address, Tracy ha<: used Cantonese.
The short man turned slowly from his contemplation of the racing stallion, contemplated the newcomer. Without turning his head, he said, 'Jade Princess, is this the one?'
386
The woman who stood next to him nodded her head, 'I recognize his voice.'
'You address me in an odd manner, Mr Richter,' Mizo said. He had a disconcerting voice, its sing-song tone as high in pitch as a girl's. 'Since you are a Westerner, perhaps new to the Colony, I will take no offence.' He eyed Tracy. 'However, I believe you owe this lady an apology. I'm afraid you gave her quite a fright last night.' His face registered distaste. 'All this talk of banks and safes.' He shook his great distorted head from side to side. 'I cannot imagine what you thought you were about.'
'If you did not know, I hardly think you would have consented to meet me,' Tracy said evenly. 'In any case the lady has my apologies. I meant only to get through her armoured gate.'
Mizo threw up his hands. 'That is the way of the world, I'm afraid. The more one is in demand, the more one must safeguard against unwarranted intrusion.'
'It's a tough life, all right,' Tracy's voice was edged in sarcasm.
'If you show us your ignorance, young man,' Mizo said somewhat stiffly, 'that is loss of face. But I imagine that particular idea holds no interest for you.' He made a sound low in this throat. 'You Westerners are all alike. American, English, French. It's all the same to me.'
He turned away from Tracy, returned to watching the horse. 'You see that stallion, Mr Richter? He cost me as much money as a score of Hong Kong residents will earn in their lifetimes. And do you know something? He is worth every cent of that. He runs like the wind and he finishes first. That is all he knows.' He turned back to Tracy, his black bead eyes, slits under heavy epicanthic folds, shrewd and sharply observing. 'He is a specialist. That is one of the many reasons why I love him. He is perfection at what he does, a moron in all other matters.' His great mountainous shoulders lifted, fell. 'The world contains few real specialists anymore. Now everyone's a dabbler, spending a matter of months like moths going from one discipline to another.' His head shook again from one side to another. 'That is not my way, Mr Richter, but I perceive that it is yours. I think we have nothing more to say to one another.'
Beyond the slow clockwise clip-clop parade of the thorough-
387
breds, beyond the bland white facades of the municipal housing projects forking up from the island, the rising hills of the Asian continent could be seen, misty, streamlined with low clouds, purpled by industrial haze.
'My father is a specialist,' Tracy said. 'I would do nothing to dishonour him.'
For a moment, Mizo did nothing. His slow breathing was like the workings of an enormous power plant. Beside him, Jade Princess remained aloof, as separated from the conversation as if she were in another part of the roof. But Tracy was not misled. She was drinking in every word; she was a part of this. And he watched her now for any telltale signs. She was a handsome woman of not more than thirty. Her skin was like porcelain, having that pale almost translucent quality so impossible for Western women to achieve. On the other hand, most Oriental women longed only for blonde hair.
She was, from her facial structure, Chiu-chow, with a long swan's neck and uptilted eyes. Her lips were wide, her cheekbones so high they seemed to pull the corners of her eyes up with them.
'So,' Mizo said at last, 'we have come to the essential question. I have a service to offer, you have four days to learn what must take no less than a year-and-a-half.' His smile when it came was crooked and altogether unpleasant. 'You begin to understand my point of view. I have only so much time to devote; why should I bother with you?'
'My father '
'Your father I know,' Mizo interrupted, 'by reputation only. He himself means nothing to me.'
'I may be able to rearrange my schedule.'
'Too little, too late.' Mizo took Jade Princess's arm, nodded. 'Good day to you, Mr Richter. I wish you well in your future endeavours.'
'There is one more thing,' Tracy said casually as the pair began to walk away from him. Mizo paused, let go of the woman's arm, turned back. 'My father is very ill; he can no longer work the way he... once could. But the honour he holds within his heart is still as strong as it ever was.' Tracy paused,
388
watching the Japanese. There was nothing there for him. It was like staring at a perfectly blank wall. Even those black button eyes refused to blink. 'He has been working on a project... for some time now. I don't know what it is. He wouldn't tell anyone about it ... even me. But I know that it is something revolutionary in the surveillance field.' Now a great stillness had come over Mizo. And in that calm, a minute tremor.
Tracy hesitated now as if, at the brink of a decision, he was undecided. 'I have the project here with me. I... took it from him because he is no longer capable of going on.'
'What is it you wish of me, Mr Richter?' The voice reedy, thin as rice paper.
'I want to show it to you,' Tracy said with some emotion. 'I want you to teach me what you can. I want to complete my father's project.'
Fire burned deep within the recesses of Mizo's slitted eyes. He had glimpsed a doorway opening into treasure. Tracy did not think he could resist.
'And that story about the Bank of Shanghai?'
'I had to find a way to you face to face,' Tracy said.
'You took a dangerous route, Mr Richter,' Mizo came forward, leaving Jade Princess in the growing shadows. 'Perhaps after all there is something I can do for you. To revere one's parents is without doubt the highest virtue. It is not the outlook of a dilettante.'
And Tracy thought. I have him!
On the border, Khieu paused to listen. He heard the brightplumed birds calling, the brief explosive chatterings of the monkeys. Behind him lay Aranyaprathet. In little more than a day and a night he had come halfway around the world. Before him the layered profusion of the jungle reared like a manyheaded beast: mythical, primeval, unbowed. One could still gaze upon it and not see for miles the scars of war like the rude furrows of a giant's nails scored into the belly of the country: home.
Kampuchea.
He walked ahead two paces and he was there.
389
Back again, the prodigal son returned to the delta of his creation. To the cruel crucible of his youth. To the bowl of blood it had now been reduced to.
He did not know whether to laugh or cry.
And in the end, he did neither. Merely began his trek, heading south into the interior of his beloved country. He had no clear idea of his ultimate destination; that would be dictated by the information that would come his way during his journey. But, he knew, his time was severely limited. If Macomber did not know that when he had called from Shanghai and had explained the mission Khieu surely did. The anxiety of leaving New York without fulfilling his duty was a constant ache inside him. His shame burned like a beacon from the centre of his soul. If Macomber had not been so insistent, Khieu would have counselled against such a trip as this. But his father was in no mood to be overridden. Something had happened to him in Shanghai and even Khieu's recounting of Senator Sullivan's disclosure and his decision to open the inquiry into the laxity of security procedures in Cairo had failed to deflect him for long from his desire.
'Khieu,' he had said heatedly, 'you must return to Cambodia now. It's impossible for me to go myself; I have been away from it for far too long.'
'What is it, Father?' he had asked, concern in his voice. . 'There is a woman, an Oriental you must find for me. She is in Cambodia, that's all I know.'
'If she is there, I will find her,' Khieu had said. Then he had asked for all the relevant information.
He moved steadily through the jungle, passing beneath swinging creepers, stepping carefully over half-sunken root networks. The black professional Nikon 35 mm camera slung around his neck, along with hard leather cases for two longfocus lenses and a string of perhaps a dozen metal canisters containing what appeared to be rolls of film, was no weight at all.
Three miles south of Aranyaprathet, he had encountered a Thai patrol. He had not considered running from them or hiding. They stopped him, asking for his identification. These
390
documents he produced: an American passport and a laminated ID card. The one showed him as a free-lance photographic journalist, the other said he was currently on assignment for tfewsweek.
The Thais were used to this kind of thing. Their commander did not ask where he was headed. He had seen too many European and American journalists come this way in the past on just such assignments. Kampuchea's eternal suffering semed to draw them like honey. The held-out promise of the sight of disaster was too strong to ignore. Instead, he silently accepted the money Khieu handed over to him for safe conduct.
'Good luck,' the commander said in the manner the Westerners had taught him. His tone was solemn; how many of them never returned. 'You'll need it.'
The forest itself shielded him from the baking heat of the direct subtropical sunlight but here the humidity was at maximum. That was all right. Heat was something he had been born into. It was far easier to take even at extreme levels others would find intolerable than New York's numbing winters which, try as he might, still shivered him each year. They seemed endless to him and he hated them.
At least, he thought, as he made his way south in a snaking line, I was able to warn Mizo. Just after Macomber had called him, he had gone out of the house and used a public pay phone. Long experience with this procedure ensured he had just the right amount of change to make the call station-to-station. If Mizo were not at home, no one would answer that particular number.
It had taken him three attempts. At last, he had got through to Jade Princess. He had had to speak for a long time and once he had to calm her, using his most soothing, persuasive tone of voice, assuring her he was speaking for Macomber as well as for himself. The angka, he reminded her, must remain sacrosanct. And in the end he got what he wanted. The business they had built with his father's help could not flourish on stupidity. They knew what had to be done. They were fully security-minded. In Hong Kong that was a way of life.
A subtle lessening of the filtered light told him the day was
391
waning; he needed no man-made instrument to confirm that. He began to search for tubers and fruit. But no animal. He was mindful that he must not build a fire. It was not the Khmer Rouge he was concerned about; he was convinced he could handle them. It was the Vietnamese army he could not afford to be spotted by.
But, in point of fact, he was hoping he would not have to spend this night in the open. He remembered a small village near here. He had been heading towards it for most of the day and, if he was not mistaken, he could not be more than a mile or so from it.
Just before the swift fall of night, when the light within the jungle was deep green heightened by thick black shadows, spreading outward as if from some central source, he came upon the village.
Or what was left of it.
Once, years ago, there had been about a half-dozen huts. A network of families who had been in this area for generations. A society complete with their own Buddhist priest.
Now there was only a glade blackened by fire. The scorched earth cracked as if groaning in protestation at his advance. Jagged shards of bamboo stuck up here and there, seemingly at random, the last remnants of hut poles. There was evidence that animal predators had roamed here in the not too distant past: hardened dung and even some spoor lingering around patches of new growth springing up in its infancy. Only the jungle survived.
In the last few instants of light left in the world, he spotted a pale glimmering. He bent down, unearthed a skull partially sunken into the ground. It was a human skull and, he saw by the thickness of the bones, a female one. It had been shattered in three places, the orbit of one eye so displaced as to be all but unrecognizable.
Two paces beyond, he discovered the remains of another skull, significantly smaller than the woman's: a child had been butchered. He crouched for a long time with the last of the child cupped in his dark palms. It could not have been more than four or five, a threat to no one. The jungle chittered and rustled on
392
around him as if it had no heart, no soul, no remorse left within it for its people. Perhaps that had been burned out of it by the tons of napalm, the endless tramp of foreign troops across its broad fertile back. Now the hated Vietnamese fished in the sacred waters of the Tonle Sap, lake of all the Khmer gods.
Khieu slowly enclosed the thing with his long fingers. So this is where the great struggle for revolution had led. The fanaticism of the Khmer Rouge had brought down upon the nation the scourge of the invading Vietnamese. Once, Khieu had thought that peace between the two peoples was possible, essential for Kampuchea to survive. That, at least, had been Sihanouk's stand and, as Sam had more than once pointed out, it was therefore invalid.
Shanghai cooking at its best.
AfWward, he wandered the streets, soaking in the jabber of ;rant%ese, the blaring of horns, snatches of music bursting forth JJ"001 doorways to nightclubs as he passed or where doors were °P5"ed for arriving patrons.
. He ducked into one of these, searched out a public telephone ln th* dimness. He was near the coatcheck room. The girl there Smile
* feminine voice answered after the fourth ring.
.Is Mizo there, please?' He said in Cantonese. .MJ *h afraid not.' The voice was light, airy, definitely Chinese.
*V I ask who is calling?' ,.
. , Tr*cy gave her his name. 'When you speak to Mizo, tell mm
S.Tthe son followin g in his father's footsteps.' th l ^o not understand.' The feminine voice was guarded now,
^ '^htness gone.
.^rhaps not,' Tracy said. You will give Mizo *e message. ^hen I see him.' The voice had turned coW with initiative gonev
«~^y business is most urgent.'
,4"Viat is too bad.' , lnW the
m TK>O bad for Mizo. In precisely five days I plan to btow mait> vault on the Bank of Shanghai. I'll do it with or w.tn
384
I
his help but in any event it will be Mizo who will get the publicity ... doubly so if I fail.'
He heard the sharp indrawn breath. 'Will you please hold a moment. There is someone at the door.'
Tracy watched the coatcheck girl. She was a slim, moonfaced Chinese with her glossy blue-blue hair in an elegant bun. She knew how to move. She saw him watching her, put one long-nailed forefinger to her lips, pressing inward for a moment, then turning the finger pad outward, extending it towards him. He saw the faint coral blush of her lipstick smear there.
'Mr Richter, are you still there?'
He said he was.
'My apologies for that delay.' The voice had changed tenor once again, revealing as many colours as a chameleon. Now it had softened, even seemed sensual. 'It happens I was able to take a quick peek at Mr Mizo's appointment book. He does have a bit of time tomorrow. Twelve-thirty. Do you know where the Jockey Club is?'
Tracy said he did, he would be there. They hung up without another word being spoken.
The Royal Hong Kongjockey Club lay along Stubbs Road, built into the eastern face of Mt Nicolson. The two-building high-rise was flanked by the race course one of two the club maintained - and by a tarmacked garage. It was not a particularly pretty section of the island as it was surrounded by undistinguished apartment houses almost all the way to the bay.
Here might be the true power in the Colony for, as many knowledgeable residents pointed out, it was the club and its 700 members who controlled all horse racing and the government lotteries, the only legally sanctioned forms of gambling allowed m Hong Kong. All charites here, Tracy knew, were served by income from the club as well as much of the governmental mancing, through a betting tax and a healthy cut from the lotteries. His Excellency, the Governor of Hong Kong, might
e the titular ruler in the Colony but the Jockey Club was the "alpower behind the office.
racy was driven by jeep further up the mountain. From
B.H..H
385
there he was directed to the roof of the Jockey Club's stables where he found a pair of fenced-in exercise yards for the club's
400 racehorses. It was not surprising. The Colony's mountainous terrain made flat space difficult to find. Here, rooftops had
to suffice.
Tracy emerged into the hot stifling sunshine, moving along the curving walkway to the left. The smell of horse was strong. Barechested handlers led sleek muscled horses in a clockwise direction around the longer outer track as well as the inner one. Across the way was the apartment building reserved for the
stables' personnel.
Two people stood against the railing further along. They watched a particular stallion moving in the outer ring. Both were Oriental, the man, who was closer to Tracy, was short and squat with the enormous bunched-muscled shoulders of a wrestler and a head as large as a football, deeper than it was high. As Tracy approached, he became convinced that the man was not Chinese at all. Hong Kong held many Chinese of different origins: Chiuchows from Swatow on the mainland, Tibetans, Mongols, Chinese Muslims, Turkistanis as well as refugees from Peking and Shantung. All might be considered Chinese in this community though all differed considerably in physical terms as well as philosophical and even religious and cultural. This man was none of these.
He was, Tracy now believed, Japanese. That seemed odd, even singular, and Tracy was at once suspicious. Once, before the onset of World War II, Shanghai had been the wide-open city whose officials asked no questions and interfered in no dealings no matter how nefarious. But the coming of the cornmunists had changed all that. Now it was Hong Kong which attracted those pariahs who were beyond the law. Traq thought this man might be one of those.
'Mizo-san,' he said, bowing his head before the squat man 'It is an honour to meet you.' Except for the address, Tracy ha<: used Cantonese.
The short man turned slowly from his contemplation of the racing stallion, contemplated the newcomer. Without turning his head, he said, 'Jade Princess, is this the one?'
386
The woman who stood next to him nodded her head, 'I recognize his voice.'
'You address me in an odd manner, Mr Richter,' Mizo said. He had a disconcerting voice, its sing-song tone as high in pitch as a girl's. 'Since you are a Westerner, perhaps new to the Colony, I will take no offence.' He eyed Tracy. 'However, I believe you owe this lady an apology. I'm afraid you gave her quite a fright last night.' His face registered distaste. 'All this talk of banks and safes.' He shook his great distorted head from side to side. 'I cannot imagine what you thought you were about.'
'If you did not know, I hardly think you would have consented to meet me,' Tracy said evenly. 'In any case the lady has my apologies. I meant only to get through her armoured gate.'
Mizo threw up his hands. 'That is the way of the world, I'm afraid. The more one is in demand, the more one must safeguard against unwarranted intrusion.'
'It's a tough life, all right,' Tracy's voice was edged in sarcasm.
'If you show us your ignorance, young man,' Mizo said somewhat stiffly, 'that is loss of face. But I imagine that particular idea holds no interest for you.' He made a sound low in this throat. 'You Westerners are all alike. American, English, French. It's all the same to me.'
He turned away from Tracy, returned to watching the horse. 'You see that stallion, Mr Richter? He cost me as much money as a score of Hong Kong residents will earn in their lifetimes. And do you know something? He is worth every cent of that. He runs like the wind and he finishes first. That is all he knows.' He turned back to Tracy, his black bead eyes, slits under heavy epicanthic folds, shrewd and sharply observing. 'He is a specialist. That is one of the many reasons why I love him. He is perfection at what he does, a moron in all other matters.' His great mountainous shoulders lifted, fell. 'The world contains few real specialists anymore. Now everyone's a dabbler, spending a matter of months like moths going from one discipline to another.' His head shook again from one side to another. 'That is not my way, Mr Richter, but I perceive that it is yours. I think we have nothing more to say to one another.'
Beyond the slow clockwise clip-clop parade of the thorough-
387
breds, beyond the bland white facades of the municipal housing projects forking up from the island, the rising hills of the Asian continent could be seen, misty, streamlined with low clouds, purpled by industrial haze.
'My father is a specialist,' Tracy said. 'I would do nothing to dishonour him.'
For a moment, Mizo did nothing. His slow breathing was like the workings of an enormous power plant. Beside him, Jade Princess remained aloof, as separated from the conversation as if she were in another part of the roof. But Tracy was not misled. She was drinking in every word; she was a part of this. And he watched her now for any telltale signs. She was a handsome woman of not more than thirty. Her skin was like porcelain, having that pale almost translucent quality so impossible for Western women to achieve. On the other hand, most Oriental women longed only for blonde hair.
She was, from her facial structure, Chiu-chow, with a long swan's neck and uptilted eyes. Her lips were wide, her cheekbones so high they seemed to pull the corners of her eyes up with them.
'So,' Mizo said at last, 'we have come to the essential question. I have a service to offer, you have four days to learn what must take no less than a year-and-a-half.' His smile when it came was crooked and altogether unpleasant. 'You begin to understand my point of view. I have only so much time to devote; why should I bother with you?'
'My father '
'Your father I know,' Mizo interrupted, 'by reputation only. He himself means nothing to me.'
'I may be able to rearrange my schedule.'
'Too little, too late.' Mizo took Jade Princess's arm, nodded. 'Good day to you, Mr Richter. I wish you well in your future endeavours.'
'There is one more thing,' Tracy said casually as the pair began to walk away from him. Mizo paused, let go of the woman's arm, turned back. 'My father is very ill; he can no longer work the way he... once could. But the honour he holds within his heart is still as strong as it ever was.' Tracy paused,
388
watching the Japanese. There was nothing there for him. It was like staring at a perfectly blank wall. Even those black button eyes refused to blink. 'He has been working on a project... for some time now. I don't know what it is. He wouldn't tell anyone about it ... even me. But I know that it is something revolutionary in the surveillance field.' Now a great stillness had come over Mizo. And in that calm, a minute tremor.
Tracy hesitated now as if, at the brink of a decision, he was undecided. 'I have the project here with me. I... took it from him because he is no longer capable of going on.'
'What is it you wish of me, Mr Richter?' The voice reedy, thin as rice paper.
'I want to show it to you,' Tracy said with some emotion. 'I want you to teach me what you can. I want to complete my father's project.'
Fire burned deep within the recesses of Mizo's slitted eyes. He had glimpsed a doorway opening into treasure. Tracy did not think he could resist.
'And that story about the Bank of Shanghai?'
'I had to find a way to you face to face,' Tracy said.
'You took a dangerous route, Mr Richter,' Mizo came forward, leaving Jade Princess in the growing shadows. 'Perhaps after all there is something I can do for you. To revere one's parents is without doubt the highest virtue. It is not the outlook of a dilettante.'
And Tracy thought. I have him!
On the border, Khieu paused to listen. He heard the brightplumed birds calling, the brief explosive chatterings of the monkeys. Behind him lay Aranyaprathet. In little more than a day and a night he had come halfway around the world. Before him the layered profusion of the jungle reared like a manyheaded beast: mythical, primeval, unbowed. One could still gaze upon it and not see for miles the scars of war like the rude furrows of a giant's nails scored into the belly of the country: home.
Kampuchea.
He walked ahead two paces and he was there.
389
Back again, the prodigal son returned to the delta of his creation. To the cruel crucible of his youth. To the bowl of blood it had now been reduced to.
He did not know whether to laugh or cry.
And in the end, he did neither. Merely began his trek, heading south into the interior of his beloved country. He had no clear idea of his ultimate destination; that would be dictated by the information that would come his way during his journey. But, he knew, his time was severely limited. If Macomber did not know that when he had called from Shanghai and had explained the mission Khieu surely did. The anxiety of leaving New York without fulfilling his duty was a constant ache inside him. His shame burned like a beacon from the centre of his soul. If Macomber had not been so insistent, Khieu would have counselled against such a trip as this. But his father was in no mood to be overridden. Something had happened to him in Shanghai and even Khieu's recounting of Senator Sullivan's disclosure and his decision to open the inquiry into the laxity of security procedures in Cairo had failed to deflect him for long from his desire.
'Khieu,' he had said heatedly, 'you must return to Cambodia now. It's impossible for me to go myself; I have been away from it for far too long.'
'What is it, Father?' he had asked, concern in his voice. . 'There is a woman, an Oriental you must find for me. She is in Cambodia, that's all I know.'
'If she is there, I will find her,' Khieu had said. Then he had asked for all the relevant information.
He moved steadily through the jungle, passing beneath swinging creepers, stepping carefully over half-sunken root networks. The black professional Nikon 35 mm camera slung around his neck, along with hard leather cases for two longfocus lenses and a string of perhaps a dozen metal canisters containing what appeared to be rolls of film, was no weight at all.
Three miles south of Aranyaprathet, he had encountered a Thai patrol. He had not considered running from them or hiding. They stopped him, asking for his identification. These
390
documents he produced: an American passport and a laminated ID card. The one showed him as a free-lance photographic journalist, the other said he was currently on assignment for tfewsweek.
The Thais were used to this kind of thing. Their commander did not ask where he was headed. He had seen too many European and American journalists come this way in the past on just such assignments. Kampuchea's eternal suffering semed to draw them like honey. The held-out promise of the sight of disaster was too strong to ignore. Instead, he silently accepted the money Khieu handed over to him for safe conduct.
'Good luck,' the commander said in the manner the Westerners had taught him. His tone was solemn; how many of them never returned. 'You'll need it.'
The forest itself shielded him from the baking heat of the direct subtropical sunlight but here the humidity was at maximum. That was all right. Heat was something he had been born into. It was far easier to take even at extreme levels others would find intolerable than New York's numbing winters which, try as he might, still shivered him each year. They seemed endless to him and he hated them.
At least, he thought, as he made his way south in a snaking line, I was able to warn Mizo. Just after Macomber had called him, he had gone out of the house and used a public pay phone. Long experience with this procedure ensured he had just the right amount of change to make the call station-to-station. If Mizo were not at home, no one would answer that particular number.
It had taken him three attempts. At last, he had got through to Jade Princess. He had had to speak for a long time and once he had to calm her, using his most soothing, persuasive tone of voice, assuring her he was speaking for Macomber as well as for himself. The angka, he reminded her, must remain sacrosanct. And in the end he got what he wanted. The business they had built with his father's help could not flourish on stupidity. They knew what had to be done. They were fully security-minded. In Hong Kong that was a way of life.
A subtle lessening of the filtered light told him the day was
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waning; he needed no man-made instrument to confirm that. He began to search for tubers and fruit. But no animal. He was mindful that he must not build a fire. It was not the Khmer Rouge he was concerned about; he was convinced he could handle them. It was the Vietnamese army he could not afford to be spotted by.
But, in point of fact, he was hoping he would not have to spend this night in the open. He remembered a small village near here. He had been heading towards it for most of the day and, if he was not mistaken, he could not be more than a mile or so from it.
Just before the swift fall of night, when the light within the jungle was deep green heightened by thick black shadows, spreading outward as if from some central source, he came upon the village.
Or what was left of it.
Once, years ago, there had been about a half-dozen huts. A network of families who had been in this area for generations. A society complete with their own Buddhist priest.
Now there was only a glade blackened by fire. The scorched earth cracked as if groaning in protestation at his advance. Jagged shards of bamboo stuck up here and there, seemingly at random, the last remnants of hut poles. There was evidence that animal predators had roamed here in the not too distant past: hardened dung and even some spoor lingering around patches of new growth springing up in its infancy. Only the jungle survived.
In the last few instants of light left in the world, he spotted a pale glimmering. He bent down, unearthed a skull partially sunken into the ground. It was a human skull and, he saw by the thickness of the bones, a female one. It had been shattered in three places, the orbit of one eye so displaced as to be all but unrecognizable.
Two paces beyond, he discovered the remains of another skull, significantly smaller than the woman's: a child had been butchered. He crouched for a long time with the last of the child cupped in his dark palms. It could not have been more than four or five, a threat to no one. The jungle chittered and rustled on
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around him as if it had no heart, no soul, no remorse left within it for its people. Perhaps that had been burned out of it by the tons of napalm, the endless tramp of foreign troops across its broad fertile back. Now the hated Vietnamese fished in the sacred waters of the Tonle Sap, lake of all the Khmer gods.
Khieu slowly enclosed the thing with his long fingers. So this is where the great struggle for revolution had led. The fanaticism of the Khmer Rouge had brought down upon the nation the scourge of the invading Vietnamese. Once, Khieu had thought that peace between the two peoples was possible, essential for Kampuchea to survive. That, at least, had been Sihanouk's stand and, as Sam had more than once pointed out, it was therefore invalid.
