Khon laughed. "What were you expecting, Harleys?"
18
The blue hills in the distance were the first thing Ford noticed as the trail opened into a small clearing. For the past five hours, they had been threading a web of jungle trails and he was exhausted, his bones rattled loose. He halted his bike and shut off the engine as Khon pulled up alongside. He watched the Cambodian gingerly remove the map from his backpack and unfold it, but despite all his care it was beginning to fall apart at the seams from humidity and use. Khon squinted at the map through his thick glasses, then looked up. "Those are the Phnom Ngue hills, and behind them the mountains along the Thai frontier."
"Man, it's hot. How do you do it, Khon?"
"Do what?"
"Stay so cool, so well-pressed."
"One must keep up appearances," he said, folding up the map with his plump, manicured fingers. "The village of Trey Nhor lies at the base of those hills. That's the final outpost of Cambodian sovereignty. After that--no-man's-land."
Ford nodded. He dabbed the sweat off his face and wiped his hands, threw his leg over the bike, fired up the tinny engine, goosed the throttle, and they set off once again, slowly bumping and weaving along the rutted trail. Over the next few kilometers they passed through several hamlets--a cluster of thatched houses on stilts, a water buffalo pulling a cart, children reciting loudly in unison in a thatched school hut--and then the trail rose to higher ground. A ridge loomed in the distance, smoke filtering up through the treetops.
"Trey Nhor," said Khon.
They drove through the forest, the whining sound of the motorbike engines like a swarm of mosquitoes. Ford felt grateful for the breeze, even if it was hardly cooling. In a few kilometers the huts of the village appeared, scattered among giant fromager trees with ribbed trunks and roots that crawled over the ground like snakes. A moment later they came into a dirt plaza, surrounded by bamboo shelters with thatched roofs. A cluster of ancestor poles stood in the center of the plaza, like a group of skinny demons. Ford gazed around; the village appeared to be empty.
They parked their bikes, kicked down the stands, and dismounted. All around the tiny clearing stood the immense, sighing forest, the human presence almost lost among the trees.
"Where is everybody?" Ford asked.
"Looks like they ran away. All but one." Khon nodded toward a shelter, and Ford could make out a wizened woman inside, sitting on a woven mat. Khon pulled a bag of candy out of his pack and they walked over. "This area was hit pretty hard during the Killing Fields," Khon said, "and they're still afraid of strangers."
"Ask her about trails into the Phnom Ngue hills."
She seemed more ancient than a person could be and still be alive, a rack of bones covered with loose, wrinkled skin. And yet she was remarkably vivacious. Sitting cross-legged on a mat, she smoked the bitter end of a cheroot and grinned at Ford, exposing a single tooth. Khon offered her the open bag of candy and she dipped her hand in, removing at least half of it in a massive, clawlike grip.
Khon spoke to the woman in dialect. She answered animatedly, her head nodding vigorously, boney fingers gesturing and pointing.
"She says we better not go in there."
"Tell her we're going and we need her help."
Khon spoke to the woman at length. "She says there's a Buddhist monastery about two kilometers north of here, reachable on foot only. The monks, she says, are the eyes and ears of the forest. We should go there first, and they'll show us the way. She'll take care of our motorbikes for the rest of that candy."
The trail ascended through a grove of crooked jackfruit trees and climbed a heavily forested ridge. The heat was so intense Ford could feel it entering his lungs with every breath. After half an hour they came to a ruined wall of giant laterite blocks, tangled with lianas, with an ancient staircase leading up the side of a hill. The climbed it and at the top arrived at a grassy area littered with half-buried blocks; beyond, a quincunx of broken towers pushed up from the clinging jungle, each tower displaying the four faces of Vishnu gazing in the cardinal directions. An ancient Khmer temple.
In the middle of the ruins, in a grassy clearing, stood the bombed-out shell of a much more recent Buddhist monastery. Roofless, its ragged stone walls were silhouetted against the sky. Beyond, Ford could see the gilded towers of stupas, or tombs, rising above the foliage. Bees droned in the heavy air and there was the scent of burning sandalwood.
At the front of the monastery, standing in the doorless entryway, was a monk wrapped in saffron robes with a shaved head. Small and wizened, he peered at them with a lively face and a pair of sparkling black eyes tucked among a thousand wrinkles. Two tiny hands clutched the edges of his robe.
Khon bowed and the monk bowed. They spoke, but once again Ford couldn't follow the dialect. The monk gestured Ford over. "You are welcome here," he said in Khmer. "Come."
They entered the roofless temple. The floor was of close-cut grass, as smooth and tended as a golf green. At one end stood a gilded statue of the Buddha, in the lotus position with half-closed eyes, almost buried under offerings of fresh flowers. Joss sticks burned in clusters around the statue, perfuming the air with sandalwood and merintane. A dozen robed monks stood behind the Buddha, almost defensively in a tight cluster, some hardly in their teens. The temple walls were made of stone recycled from the older ruin, and Ford could see pieces of sculpture peeking out of the broken, mortared blocks--a hand, a torso, half a face, the wildly gyrating limb of a dancing apsara. Along one wall ran two ragged lines of bullet pits made from a spray of automatic weapons fire. It looked to Ford like the site of an old execution.
"Please, sit down," the monk said, gesturing at some reed mats spread on the grass. The afternoon sun slanted in the broken roof, painting the eastern wall gold, incense smoke drifting in and out of the bars of light. After some minutes of silence a monk came in with an old cast-iron pot of tea and some chipped cups, placed them on the mat, and poured. They drank the strong green tea. When they had finished, the abbot rose.
"Do you speak Khmer?" he asked Ford in a birdlike voice.
Ford nodded.
"What brings you to the end of the world?"
Ford dipped into his pocket and took out the fake honey stone. With a gasp, the abbot rose quickly and stepped back in one fluid motion, and the other monks shuffled away. "Get that devil stone out of here."
"It's a fake," said Ford smoothly.
"You're gem traders?"
"No," said Ford. "We're looking for the mine producing the honey stones."
For the first time, a flicker of emotion passed across the monk's face. He seemed to hesitate, running a hand over his dry, shaven scalp. His fingers made a slight bristling noise as they ran over the stubble. "Why?"
"I come from the U.S. government. We want to know where it is and shut it down."
"There are many ex-Khmer Rouge soldiers there, armed with guns, mortars, and RPGs. Violent people. How do you expect to go there and survive?"
"Will you help us?"
The monk spoke without hesitation. "Yes."
"What do you know about the mine?"
"There was a big explosion in the forest about a month ago. And then, a little while later, they came. They raided mountain villages to get people to mine the devil stones. They work them to death and then go out and capture more."
"Can you tell us anything about the layout of the mine, the number of soldiers, who's running the place?"