Ang was irritated now. ‘I did not ask you here to argue politics, Mistah Elliot.’ He paused to collect himself. ‘And wealthy?’
Elliot inclined his head in a slight ironic gesture. ‘The manicure, the cut of your suit, the quality of your English. And if you didn’t have money you couldn’t afford me.’
A waitress brought small round dishes of soy sauce and spring onion, a large dish filled with strips of raw marinated beef, and a hotplate which she placed on one side before lighting a gas ring beneath it.
‘Chopsticks?’ Ang asked Elliot.
‘Sure.’
The girl smiled and brought them each a pair of finely engraved ivory chopsticks. She returned with a bowl of shredded Korean vegetables, soaked in a bitter dressing, then started arranging the meat on the hotplate with a pair of wooden chopsticks. The beef sizzled and spat as she moved it around, and the air was filled with a delicious aroma of exotic spices. Two bowls of steamed rice were brought before she served them the cooked meat, bowed and took her leave. Elliot tried it. Ang watched.
‘Good?’
Elliot nodded. It was. ‘Excellent.’
They helped themselves to rice and vegetables and Ang arranged more meat on the hotplate. Two small jugs of warm sake arrived. Ang poured them each a cup and raised his. ‘To a profitable relationship,’ he said.
Elliot sipped his sake. ‘I’ll wait till I hear what the deal is.’
Ang drained his cup in a single draught. ‘What do you know about Cambodia, Mistah Elliot? Or should I say, Democratic Kampuchea?’ He could not hide the bitterness in his voice.
Elliot shrugged. ‘Since the Khmer Rouge took over, not much. Except that they seem to be killing a lot of people.’
‘Not a lot, Mistah Elliot. Millions.’
‘An exaggeration, I think, Mr Ang.’
‘No. The stories have been confirmed by the refugees coming across the northern border into Thailand. And they have come in their thousands. I know. I have spent a lot of time in the refugee camps there, Mistah Elliot, off and on for more than three years.’
‘You don’t look much like a refugee to me.’
‘Perhaps not. But I am, nonetheless.’
‘A rich refugee.’
If Ang detected Elliot’s sarcasm he gave no sign of it. ‘As you supposed, I was not without influence with the Americans. I succeeded in getting most of my money out of the country in the months before Phnom Penh fell to the Khmer Rouge.’
‘And yourself with the American evacuation, no doubt.’
‘Yes.’
Elliot detected a moment of pain in the Cambodian’s eyes.
‘Unfortunately my influence did not extend to the evacuation of my family.’ Ang glanced at Elliot and saw the contempt flicker across his face. A look he had seen on many faces since 1975. He examined his hands. ‘My wife, Serey. My daughter, Ny. She will be seventeen now. And Hau, my son. He will be twelve.’
‘If they are still alive.’
‘Oh, they are still alive.’ The light of hope burned brightly for a moment in Ang’s eyes.
‘How can you know that?’
‘I did not spend all that time in the refugee camps because I had to, Mistah Elliot. I have American citizenship now.’
‘Amazing what money can buy – and what it can’t.’
Ang faltered only momentarily. ‘I was there through choice. I talked to hundreds, maybe thousands, of refugees. They all told the same stories of what was happening in Cambodia – of the atrocities these murderers are perpetrating in my country.’
Elliot recalled the infamous Nixon pronouncement after the US bombing of Cambodia in 1970 – Cambodia is the Nixon doctrine in its purest form. No involvement. As if bombs were somehow neutral.
Ang was still talking. ‘There were always those in the camps seeking news of relatives or friends. Some were lucky, most were not.’
‘And you?’ Elliot found himself interested, in spite of an instinctive dislike of Ang.
‘I had almost given up.’ He remembered the hopelessness of it all. The skeletal figures with their pathetic bundles of ragged possessions who came out of the jungle day after day. Some had lost wives or husbands, fathers and mothers, sons and daughters. They thought they had escaped to freedom, when all that awaited them were the camps, and the indifference of the West. Barbed wire, rows of long insanitary huts. A Thai regime that didn’t want them was determined to keep them there, without home or country.
‘Until six weeks ago,’ he said. ‘I had a reported sighting at a commune north of Siem Reap. A woman who had known my wife in Phnom Penh. It was promising, but uncertain.’ He had recalled the woman vaguely. Her children had gone to school with his. She had told him it could have been his wife she saw. But one face looked much like another in the communes, she said. Blank. People did not speak. Recognition was dangerous. The past could kill. ‘I still needed confirmation. I got it ten days ago. No doubts. My wife is alive. And my daughter.’ He paused. ‘My son I do not know about.’ He sat silent for a long time, then he looked up. ‘Mistah Elliot, I will pay you half a million US dollars – everything I have left – if you will go into Cambodia and get them out.’
CHAPTER FIVE
The sun had been merciless, beating down in waves like physical blows, her only protection the conical hat and ragged black pyjamas she wore. Hands like leather worked the wooden shaft of the hoe to a rhythm that was as much a part of her now as breathing.
Serey had lost track of the passage of time since her death. For that was how she saw her life under the Khmer Rouge. A living death. An existence, nothing more. The endless hours in the fields, the indoctrination sessions when the sun went down. Young fanatics haranguing the new breed of Cambodians. Automatons serving the needs of Angkar – the Organization. Mercifully, these had become less frequent since moving to this commune. At first the speakers had been seductive, appealing
