A dozen rebels standing around leaning on their vehicles, laughing and chattering in Khmer when they saw me led out of the cell by the two guards: a round-eye in the camp was an event.
I couldn't see my jeep anywhere; maybe it was still out there on the track through the mountains, and they were going to bring it in later.
My guards hadn't put the blindfold back on; I don't think they'd forgotten to; it was just that they knew it didn't matter now what I saw here, I wasn't going to tell anybody.
They pushed me into the jeep, my arms still tied behind me by the sleeves of my jacket. One of them got behind the wheel and the other sat beside me with the muzzle of his assault rifle dug into my side. I could smell his hair oiclass="underline" he was the one who'd spoken in French when they'd seized me.
The air came in hot waves against my face as we set off, and when we left the shade of the camouflage net the sun was below the foothills and the sky deepening towards the west. The infra-red had been pouring into the canyon all day long, leaving a flood of heat for us to drive through.
'I told your colonel the truth, you know,' I called in French to the man next to me above the rattling of the jeep. 'I haven't any interest in politics, or who runs this country.'
He didn't answer, dug the gun harder into my side. The driver twisted his head round and called out something in Khmer, asking what I'd said, I suppose. I was glad he was interested: it could make a difference.
'All I want is to increase my employer's business. The airline's doing pretty well already, and this would make me quite a bit of money, as a bonus.'
The shadow of the jeep ran ahead of us, twenty or thirty feet long, rippling over the stones and the tufts of scrub in the middle of the track. Farther ahead I saw my jeep, standing where I'd left it, and we began slowing. So it had just been a joke on the part of Colonel Choen when he'd put his finger against his head like that: what he'd barked to the soldier in Khmer was an order for him to take me back to my jeep and let me go, because I'd convinced him I'd lost my way.
Then there's the one about little Red Riding Hood and the wicked wolf who dressed up as her grandmother and everything.
'So I'm just a business man,' I said to the guard, 'that's all, looking for profit. Are you a business man?'
The gun prodded. He knew perfectly well what I was saying: his French had been fluent, idiomatic, the few times he'd spoken.
'My freedom means a lot to me,' I told him. 'So what about tern million riel to share between you and your comrade?' His head turned to look at me as we slowed alongside my jeep and pulled up. They were going, then, to drive it back to the camp when they'd finished with me.
'Ask your comrade,' I told the guard, 'what he thinks of ten million riel in cash.'
He went on watching me. In Cambodia that amount of money would set them up in business as travel agents, buy them a brand new Trabant.
He didn't say anything. The engine of the jeep idled.
'With ten million,' I told him, 'you could buy a brand new Trabant, or set yourselves up in business, or buy enough raw cocaine coming through from Thailand to turn ten million into a thousand. You want to think about that? A thousand million riel?'
The man behind the wheel switched off the engine and looked round at us, jerking his chin up, wanting to know what was going on.
'Tell your comrade,' I said, 'that you're looking at a thousand million riel.'
He went on watching me for a bit and then turned his head and spoke to the driver in Khmer, and the driver laughed and swung his fist to the side of my head and knocked me half out of the jeep and left me dizzy, couldn't see much for a while except a blinding light that went on throbbing as I got my breath back, both of them laughing now but I swear to you that the one who spoke French had been interested, I'd seen it in his eyes, we could have made a deal and I could have got into my jeep and driven away, just a mental exercise, that's all, it's of no importance.
Then they dragged me out and we began walking across to the ravine not far from the track, maybe fifty yards.
It was quiet here except for the sound of our boots. The sky was turning from saffron to rust red in the west, and I saw the first star pricking the twilight. Three water fowl threaded the air above the ridge, homing to the Tonle Sap, and as I looked down I wondered if I would see the leopard again.
The two men weren't talking any more, and I thought it possible that as Buddhists they were aware that a life was soon to pass, here in this quiet place, and that even though they themselves were going to take it, there should be peace until the thing was done.
'What, then,' I asked the man who spoke French, 'can I offer you?'
One has to try, however late the hour.
There was no answer. He was walking beside me, his assault rifle at the slope. The other man was behind, the muzzle of his gun pressing against my spine.
'Talk it over,' I said, 'with your comrade. This is a unique chance for you — there's nobody more generous than a dying man, and I have plenty to give.'
He didn't answer. Our boots crunched over the stones in the silence, and I changed the subject.
'I saw a leopard,' I said, 'earlier,' simply to engage his attention as I swung round hard and forced the gun downward with my elbow and smashed my head into his face and drove the nose bone into the brain as the first shot banged before his finger was jerked clear of the trigger. I'd practised twisting in and out of the jacket five times in the cell but it seemed to take a long time now before I got my hands free and went for the one who spoke French as he started backing off to give himself room, suddenly learning that a gun at close quarters is useless, a dead weight, just something that gets in your way — I wouldn't have stood a chance if they'd kept their distance on the walk here from the jeep, couldn't have tried anything at all.
He got out a short burst but it was wide because he hadn't had time to swing the thing round into the aim and I was there now, forcing the barrel down and bringing his shoulders down with it, his shoulders and his face, then I smashed upward again but missed because he was ready for that, had seen what I'd done to the other man, didn't want it to happen to him, he was worried now, crouched over his gun and trying to find his balance again because when I'd tried the upward smash he'd half twisted round to avoid it, so I had a half-second to work with but it wasn't enough because I was off balance too and he recovered first and began swinging the gun into me — he'd forgotten already, forgotten the bloody thing was no good at close quarters, they hadn't taught them that at the school for revolutionaries, all they'd been taught was bang and you're dead, forcing, I was forcing the gun down again and the muzzle hit the stones and then he was on me, learning fast, remembering he'd got hands with strength in them, had them closing on my throat and I relaxed, went limp and dropped as far as he'd let me before I went for his eyes and felt his hands come away from my throat but they'd been squeezing hard and my breath was sawing in and out as we both went down now and he put a lock on me and trapped one arm, Christ he was strong, strong and lean and athletic and with the spirit in him, the spirit of the die-hard revolutionary, red flags in his eyes, the Khmer Rouge forever and all that jazz and it wasn't helping me, it was giving him the strength of two men, three, and I wasn't getting in there with the centre-knuckle strikes, kept missing him because he wouldn't keep still and I was on my back now with the last of the daylight in the sky and his head and shoulders etched in black against it, the silhouette of the death-bringer bearing down on me as he trapped my other arm with his leg across it and I couldn't find the force I needed because of the breathing thing, couldn't get the oxygen to the muscles and it felt like drowning, not being strong enough to use purchase, leverage, the twilight fluttering now as the man above me raised his hand and in his hand I saw the rock and it looked heavy, black against the sky, and as it came down I jerked my knee and connected with his tail-bone and he screamed and his arm went limp and as I twisted round the rock crashed down beside my head and I took it from there, kneeing him again and this time hard enough to paralyze and he screamed again in agony and I rolled clear and lay there listening to him, listening carefully in case he came out of the trauma with any strength left, but he wasn't moving, couldn't move.