A breeze brushed the faces. The thousands of faces all along Monivong Boulevard. It carried the smell of smoke, a city burning in places.
It carried the smell of fear. They said the Americans were coming to bomb the city; it would be safer in the countryside. No one believed it.
It carried the smell of death. They had emptied the hospitals. Broken bodies wheeled out on hospital beds, the tubes and wires of a discarded technology trailing behind, plasma and blood in their wake. Those who could walk leaned on crutches. Those who could not, died. The debris of this once elegant colonial city littered the street; a child screaming, an old man coughing blood on the pavement, the weary shuffling of a million pairs of feet on a dusty road to oblivion.
There is another proverb: ‘Hell is a city.’ On 17 April 1975, that city was Phnom Penh.
CHAPTER ONE
Ang Serey was a handsome woman, though you would scarcely have guessed it. Her face was blackened by smoke, and you could not tell if it was sweat or tears that made tracks through the filth. Her eyes were red-rimmed and bloodshot, and afraid to stray to one side or the other lest they betray an emotion. Her feet shuffled in open sandals among all the others. Ahead of her she pushed a cart bearing a few meagre belongings. On either side were the children she dared not look at. ‘Hold on to me so that I can feel you are there,’ she had whispered to them. ‘If anyone speaks to you, say nothing. Let me speak.’
For days she had worked her hands until they blistered and bled. Digging in the soft earth among the suburban bougainvillea, rubbing the dirt into the sores and blisters till her hands were red raw. She had made her children do it, too. The boy had cried at first, waving his stinging hands in the air. Why did his own mother make him do this? She had struck him when he refused to go on. And when his tears dried they were replaced by a sullen stare of hatred. The girl was older, yet it seemed she understood even less.
Ang Serey was an intelligent woman. She knew she must use that intelligence to hide itself; the black, peasant pyjamas, the hands of one who worked the land. Somehow she had to make the children understand. For if she couldn’t, their betrayal of the truth meant certain death.
There had been so little time. Just five days since Yuon had flown out on one of the last helicopters with the American evacuation. Ten days since he had told her, tears streaming down his cheeks, that he had been unable to get a place for her and the children. He had cried most of that night. Her eyes had been dry. She wondered if he expected her sympathy. It would break his heart to leave them, he had said. But still he left. Perhaps they could mend broken hearts in the West.
She lifted her head slightly towards the clear blue sky and felt the heat of the sun on her skin. They had passed by the smoking cathedral and the railway station, all those shuffling feet.
CHAPTER TWO
South Armagh, Northern Ireland, October 1978
McAlliskey sat on a bench in a darkened corner of the pub, nursing the last of the Guinness in his pint glass, pulling distractedly on a hand-rolled cigarette held loosely between nicotine-stained fingers. The pub was quiet. A small, old-fashioned country pub, its wooden bar worn smooth by years of use. A group of farmers stood in a knot sinking pints and shorts, talking in low voices that rose occasionally in muted laughter. Big men, grimy caps pulled down over leathery faces.
‘Jaisus! If the beasts’s going to die anyway, youse are as well pumping the stuff into it yourself and saving the vet’s bill!’
An old woman behind the bar polished glasses, listening idly to the conversation. From time to time she glanced across at the stranger in the corner. She didn’t know him. She didn’t want to know him. This was bandit country and it was dangerous to know too much, dangerous to ask questions. Curiosity killed.
McAlliskey had crossed the border from the Republic three days earlier and spent two nights in different safe-houses. He stirred uneasily and flicked a look at the clock behind the bar. O’Neil was late, and he was aware of the woman’s attempts to avoid taking an interest in him. Which meant she would remember him. Where in God’s name had O’Neil got to? If something had gone wrong McAlliskey would be vulnerable here. He had the taste of fear in his mouth – a taste he knew well, had lived with these ten years past. But he could sink a dozen pints and not achieve the high he got from the adrenalin that was pumping through his veins right now.
A tiny stab of fear pricked his heart as the door opened and a man stepped into the pub, bringing the damp night air with him. O’Neil. Dark eyes set deep in a pale thin face. There was mud on his boots, rain on his collar, death in his eyes. He paused only momentarily, his gaze flickering past McAlliskey to the men at the bar. They seemed not to notice him.
He nodded to the woman. ‘Twenty Players plain.’
She reached for a packet from the shelf behind her and put it on the bar. ‘A wee whiskey, sir, to warm you on a cold night?’
He shook his head and dropped a note and some coins on the counter and glanced again at the little group of farmers. Still they showed no interest. He slipped the cigarettes in his pocket, nodded to the old woman and went out.
McAlliskey sat on for several minutes before draining his glass and taking a final draw on the remains of his cigarette. He rose from the bench, turning up his collar,
