The flat white waters of the Tonle Sap lake were already spread diagonally across the plains ahead of us, and we came down with the sun three diameters high above the east horizon and the air already heating up as we crossed the dusty apron from the plane to the freight sheds.
'You need a hand with those mine detectors?' I asked Tucker.
'Nope, there'll be a crew coming. But you'll want some wheels, right?'
'Yes. All terrain.'
'We'll go and see Jimmy. And leave the talking to me, okay? He'll have the skin off your back if he doesn't know you.'
Jimmy was an energetic young Vietnamese, holed up in a huddle of tin-roofed sheds on the airfield perimeter track, a flash of gold teeth and lots of nodding as Tucker spoke to him in his own language, then switched to English.
'Jimmy, this guy's a friend of mine, you know what I'm saying?' He turned to me. 'Jimmy says he doesn't understand the Queen's English, but that's just so he can screw you on the deal — hey, Jimmy, your flies are undone — there he goes, see what I mean?'
'All new here,' Jimmy said, blushing, 'all new vehicles, cost me lot of money to buy them, what you looking for?'
'We're looking for a jeep, Jimmy, four-wheel-drive, new tyres — what about that one?'
'If it's in good shape,' I said. It had camouflage paintwork and the springs looked even and the headlamps still had glass in them but that didn't tell us anything about the big ends or the rocker arms.
'Start her up, Jimmy,' Tucker said, and we listened to the engine and I rocked the front wheel bearings and bumped the shocks and looked under the crankcase for leaks.
'I'll take it,' I said.
'Okay, Jimmy, the gent's going to take it, so I'll tell you — '
'Hundred thousand riel,' Jimmy said, flashing gold, 'for day.'
'So I'll tell you what we'll do,' Tucker said. 'We'll give you fifty thousand for the first two days in cash right now and we'll make it twenty thousand a day after that, start with a tankful and that tidy little dent in the rear wing, and if — '
'Hundred thousand,' Jimmy said, flashing his gold assets, 'for day.'
'And if you can't meet those terms,' Tucker told him pleasantly, 'I'm going to bring in the drug enforcement guys and they'll go through this place with sniffer dogs and you'll spend the rest of your life in the torture cells in Phumi Prison and you'll wish to Christ you'd said yes to our handsome offer of fifty the first two days and twenty thereafter, you want me to repeat that do you, Jimmy?'
I paid in cash.
There were two canvas water-bags slung outboard on the jeep but I drove round to the front of the airfield terminal and picked up half a dozen sealed plastic bottles of Evian water from the concession and stowed them behind the driver's seat. I didn't know where I'd be going today, or how far, and at noon the sky would be a hot brass dome across the city and the plains.
By nine o'clock the sun was already over the mountains south-east by east of the town, and the heat waves were spilling molten silver across the airfield. In the distance the sugar palms leaned along the horizon like a broken palisade, and I saw egrets on the wing, black against the blinding sky.
There was no shade for the jeep that wouldn't block out my view of the landing strip and the tower on one side, the freight sheds and the hangars on the other. But the canvas top was up and I had my sunglasses on against the glare. The runway slanted across my vision field, broken away at the edges and streaked with black rubber, and I saw a rat as big as a pig darting across it, God knows whence or on what errand.
I began watching the sky to the south.
10: LEOPARD
It was an hour before a black splinter floated into the glare above the horizon, the sun flashing on it as it began turning into its descent, becoming an aircraft, drifting on its flight path above the foothills to the south-west with its strobe sparking in the saffron haze as the landing gear came down and its profile tilted as it settled towards the runway, a Czechoslovakian-built L 410 Turbolet flying the Trans-Kampuchean insignia at the tail.
It was a passenger plane, so I started the jeep and moved round the perimeter track to the terminal building and parked near the bus station and walked across to the arrivals wing, finding adequate cover on the far side and well clear of the car rental desks and the newsstand and the baggage console and the toilets.
Fourteen passengers came through, one of them Pringle, none of them Colonel Choen. I had never seen Choen, but I would know him when I did.
Pringle wasn't looking around for me, wouldn't expect me to be here, wouldn't expect me to approach him even if I were.
I went back to the jeep and took up station again halfway between the terminal building and the freight sheds.
The rising heat shimmered like a lake across the runway, and I sat with my eyes closed now behind the sunglasses to protect the retinae from the glare, checking the south horizon at intervals through the slits of my lids.
Eleven-ten, but this one wasn't coming in: it was a Beriev Tchaika amphibian, lowering across the east towards the Tonle Sap.
Noon minus twelve and a Skyvan 3M came rumbling out of the south like an elephant, and I started the jeep again and moved towards the freight sheds and was there when the crew came off, three Caucasians, one of them limping, all of them lighting cigarettes as they walked across to the office.
At noon I opened the first bottle of Evian and drank half, holding it like a trumpet and seeing beyond it the helicopter moving in from the south, lower than the other aircraft had been, tracing its path across the mountains to the south-east now and turning, making its approach, fifteen degrees high. I put the cap back on the bottle and stowed it with the others, not taking my eyes off the chopper, noting the camouflage paint, the absence of any insignia, simply the identification letters, F-KYP, the strobe flashing, the fronds of the sugar palms waving under the downdraught from the twin rotors, a Kamov KA-26, touching down within fifty yards of the freight sheds as I started up again and found cover between a hangar and the loading dock as a camouflaged staff car with the fabric top raised came in from the perimeter road and pulled up, two men in battle fatigues dropping to the ground and going towards the helicopter as the rotors slowed and the cabin door came open.
I could hear his voice already, barking an order to the pilot, and his walk was as I'd expected, a militarily-correct parade-ground strut as he crossed the apron, snapping back a salute to the two men and swinging himself into the staff car on the front passenger's side, barking again as the driver got in and asked him something and nodded quickly and started the engine.
Colonel Choen.
Access — of a sort. Access to General Kheng and finally to Pol Pot, if I got it right.
'Your first objective,' Pringle had told me at Phnom Penh airport, 'is to gain information on that man.'
So I waited until the car was through the gates and halfway round the perimeter road and then took up the tag.
I watched the mirror.
Thirty-five minutes ago the staff car had stopped outside a white two-storey building next to a temple, its walls bullet-scarred and covered with faded slogans. Colonel Choen and one of his escorts had gone into the building. The other man, the driver, was leaning against the car, smoking his third cigarette.
An hour and fifteen minutes ago I should have telephoned Pringle at the Hotel Lafayette, but that was when the helicopter was landing, and I'd had no chance since. The traffic in Pouthisat was the same as in Phnom Penh: motorized vehicles with native drivers ploughed through everything else on the narrow streets — cyclos, oxen, pushcarts, bikes, dogs and chickens, and it had been difficult to keep track of the staff car without moving in too close.