“It looks so angry. Like adding insult to injury.”
“We’re talking about a piece of stone,” said Kleat. “A dead city.”
“Molly’s right,” Duncan said. “It does look…excessive.”
“Excessive,” Kleat scoffed. “They were fighting for their lives.”
“Samnang’s got a point, though. The only damaged wall is this one. And see how the faces of the Buddhas were targeted? This knife didn’t end up here by accident. Someone found a joint in the stone and hammered it in with all his strength. This looks less like a battle than a signature.”
“What does it matter?” Kleat said. “A bunch of old statues.”
He grabbed at the handle. He was arming himself, Molly realized. Let him have it. The knife would be a rusty old thing.
He pulled, but the wall held on. He braced his other hand against the stone to pull again. Just then a clap of thunder exploded directly above the canopy.
It was so close, Molly’s knees buckled. She smelled ozone, a whiff of the upper stratosphere. The men’s eyes went wide and white. They looked at each other.
The seconds passed, her ears ringing. More thunder rippled in the far distance. The sense of nature returned.
The knife and the sky had nothing to do with each other. It had been thundering since morning. Just the same, Kleat released the stubborn handle with disgust.
In the silence that followed, another sound descended to them, the hushing sound leaves make when they tremble. But it wasn’t the leaves.
After a minute, water began dripping through the canopy.
The rain had finally come.
25.
They fled the tower slowly. Rain fell in rivulets from the canopy. Water raced down the furrow in the winding staircase, forcing them to the edge. Molly had the advantage with her climber’s balance and her youth. Twice she caught Kleat when he slipped. For a few minutes, the dangers unified them.
The forest grew darker by ounces. The rain diminished. Samnang guided them through the city to the stairs that led to camp.
The brothers had already returned from the gate. The thatch hut and campfire waited below like a lighthouse in a deep harbor. By the time they reached ground level, Molly’s cold sweat had returned.
It couldn’t be malaria, she thought. She was on proquanil. Then again, she was on proquanil because the Cambodian strain of malaria had grown resistant to chloroquine. Maybe the bug had morphed again.
The brothers, by the fire, were in high spirits, their gold teeth flickering like sparks in the darkness, their tattoos glistening from the canopy’s slow drip. Molly arrived at the hut to find two dry green ponchos spread as a floor. Vin bustled over with a cup of steaming black tea loaded with so much sugar it made her teeth ache. She thanked him.
Kleat arrived, his bronze skull as slick as a muscle car. He was wearing the flak jacket from the tower room. Now he could pretend to be bulletproof like the brothers. The superstitions were layering over them. He didn’t bother to remove his boots. Molly scooted deeper into the hut to make room for him.
He thumped her knee. “We’re saved,” he said.
Molly tried to evade his good cheer. But it was hard not to feel some camaraderie. Two nights ago they’d been licking their wounds in a restaurant, banished and irrelevant. All that was changed. Fame and wealth and great dreams were almost within their grasp. It did feel like salvation. She had her camera in her lap. The display screen flickered with images of the strange, beautiful city.
Duncan came in from the darkness. “Have you looked in the truck? There must be ten heads in there. You’ve got to get a photo of it,” he said to Molly. “It’s like they’ve decapitated the city. The heads are always the first things to be plundered. They’re portable. Collectors go wild for them. They move like lightning on the art market.”
Samnang entered from the night, wordless, and crossed his legs. Raindrops clung to his white burr cut. Cutting a glance at him, Kleat looked confused and at the same time annoyed, like a man who has misplaced his keys.
“They must not do this,” Samnang said. “Taking the heads like barbarians.”
“It’s a small price to pay,” said Kleat. “Play it through with them. You’ll get what you want. We all will.”
“You don’t understand?” Samnang asked Kleat.
Kleat tsk-tsked. Dumb question. End of discussion. The fire snapped in their silence.
The Americans and Samnang dried off under the thatch roof, all except Molly, who could not quit sweating. Suddenly ravenous, she pulled the box of MREs toward her. “Spaghetti and meatballs,” she said.
She offered the MREs to Vin and his brothers, out by the fire, but they waved off her hospitality, too intent on toting up their riches with a hand calculator. She would have to think up some other way to mother them. It was imperative that they not forsake the Americans.
The canopy leaked in episodes, dripping like a metronome, then spilling in vertical columns that released here, then there. It was all cause and effect, no mystery. A leaf brimming with rainwater would flip over, creating a chain reaction among lower leaves. Every few minutes another gush of water splashed in the darkness. It would go on until the canopy had lightened its load.
One of the miniature waterfalls scored a direct hit on their fire. White steam billowed up and the hut went dark. The brothers jumped to their feet. “Ho,” they shouted, laughing. Then the flames jumped high again.
The brothers settled back along the edge of the fire. The dirt and embers at one end of the pit seemed to twitch on their own, like someone struggling to break free from below. Molly passed it off as shadows.
Vin was dispatched to offer the Americans a bottle of clear liquid, which he poured into their empty tea cups. Kleat took a sip. “God, you could clean paint off with that,” he said.
“Not good,” Samnang murmured after Vin left.
“As long as they’re happy.”
“The happy part won’t last,” Duncan said. The brothers looked over, and he smiled and raised a toast to them. “I’ve seen men go at each other with hatchets on this stuff.”
“And us without a gun,” Kleat said. He toasted Molly and took another sip of the hooch and adjusted his flak jacket.
Molly wished she’d thought of the flak jacket, not for the armoring, but the warmth. Was she the only one who felt the cold? If only they would build the fire a little higher.
Back in Kampong Cham, they had pledged to turn around at the first sign of rain. There was no question about staying through the night, though. It would be absurd to try to retrace the oxcart trail at night, and the river would not recede until morning. Neither Samnang nor Duncan could predict tomorrow’s weather. Without a radio or even a view of the sky, they were reduced to speculation. The mountain would act as a natural magnet for the first precipitation, and maybe this little shower was all the sky contained for now.
They came up with every excuse to stay. They pretended the decision was theirs to make, that they were in full command of themselves. They pretended emotion had nothing to do with wanting to stay, that the very fact they were discussing caution meant caution still ruled. But the ruins were inciting them. Everyone had something to gain here. The nearness of the bones had Kleat in high gear, and the marvels of the city excited Duncan, and the plunder wound up the brothers. Even old Samnang had desires. Molly saw him lay out a row of incense sticks and knew he meant to return to the tower. They were all obsessed, herself included.
It was agreed that the rain signified the beginning of the wet monsoon and had nothing to do with the typhoon. The typhoon might have died in the South China Sea, or it might still strike them.
The bigger uncertainty was the brothers. Duncan guessed the truck held a half million dollars’ worth of relics now. They could simply drive away in the morning and leave the Americans. It was all a matter of their whim. Samnang said they meant to stay. They wanted more.
The fire stirred again. Something was under there. Molly saw it again, like an invisible hand moving its fingers
