Gabrielle ordered in Khmer, rapidly and with ease, and the boy took the menus away, his eyes dull, distracted by things on his mind.
'You speak Khmer?' the Frenchwoman asked me.
'Please, thank you and your prices are too high.'
'You've been here before?'
'Yes.'
'As a tourist?'
'Yes.' Or sort of, but I hadn't been able to look at the temples the last time I was here because I'd been trying to locate three of our agents-in-place who'd disappeared after a small hotel had been blown up and the left hand of one of them had been taken along to the police station for identification, a signet ring still on a finger. I'd signalled London, Wilson got it.
'Mr Flockhart is well?' Gabrielle Bouchard asked me.
'In very good form.' The smell in this place was obtrusive, a mixture of rotten fish, kerosene, mangoes and disinfectant. 'He sends his best regards.'
'I took some pictures for him in Paris, and he was generous. He told me you were to arrive here and asked me to settle you down.' She meant settle me in; I'd started speaking to her in French when we'd met in the lobby, but she preferred English, perhaps for practice.
Well now, that had been nice of Mr Flockhart to ask Gabrielle Bouchard to look after me, but in point of fact there must be more than one agent-in-place and a sleeper or two in Phnom Penh who could brief me on local conditions if I needed that; it wouldn't normally be left to a Parisian photojournalist who wasn't Bureau.
The thing was, then, he didn't want even the local AlPs or the sleepers to know I was here.
Invisible man.
Who do you work for?' I asked Gabrielle.
'L 'Humanite.'
'Are you covering anything specific for them?'
I got a very direct look from the dark blue eyes, as if I'd said something offensive. 'Just Phnom Penh,' she said.
'What have you got so far?'
'Nothing. I am waiting. We are all waiting.' She looked away, around the big shabby-ornate room, as a boy brought the sodas she'd ordered from the bar. In a moment she squeezed the lemons into them, her thin strong hands moving automatically, her eyes abstracted. 'But meanwhile' — her mouth tightened — 'I might be lucky and get a shot of a little girl being blown to pieces in the sunshine, something like that. Something to make the world pay attention, if it will ever open its eyes.' She passed me one of the sodas. 'Where is your identity bracelet?' She'd followed the thought train from the little girl.
'I'm getting one made.' The bracelet she wore on her left wrist was stainless steel, the standard issue, fireproof and even percussion proof, within limits.
'But you've had your shots?'
'Yes.' My medic in London had thrown the book at me: tetanus, diphtheria, meningitis and gamma globulin.
'It's very important,' Gabrielle said, 'in this — ' she broke off as the bulbs in the grimy-looking candelabra in the centre of the ceiling flickered for a bit and went out.
'Is the power station under attack?' I asked her.
'No. The power station does not work very well.' The serving boys were lighting small kerosene lamps, one of them giving a giggle as he hung his lamp back on the wall; the sound was as shocking as laughter at a funeral. As the flames burned brighter the room took on an unearthly glow. 'You are in the media?' Gabrielle was asking.
'No. I'm on a roving commission for Trans-Kampuchean Air.'
A man came up to our table and dropped a Kodak bag in front of Gabrielle. 'Et voila! '
'Jacques, to es un ange, mais vraiment!' She reached up and he stooped to receive a kiss, tall, painfully thin, his stubbled face ravaged and his eyes deep in their shadowed sockets, his long mouth creased in the pleasure of the moment.
'Pour toi, n'importe quoi…' He straightened up, the clown's smile lingering as he dipped his head to me and walked away, one shoulder drooping.
Gabrielle took some of the small yellow boxes out of the bag, turning them over to read their printing in the dim light of the lamps. 'Fast film, 1,000 ASA — almost impossible to find in Phnom Penh…' She followed the leaning Don Quixote figure for a moment with her eyes. 'He has been here for twenty years, and has seen terrible things. He saw the Killing Fields.' She put the boxes back and pulled the drawstring tight at the neck of the bag.
'He's a photographer too?' I asked her.
With a quick, tight laugh — 'Jacques is many things, but yes, he takes brilliant pictures, frightening pictures.' The draught from the ceiling fans was fretting at the wicks of the small kerosene lamps, and shadows fluttered across her face. 'He goes sometimes into the jungle, for days on end.'
When the food arrived we stopped talking for a while and Gabrielle forgot my existence, eating only occasionally and without appetite, deep in her thoughts; in this light she looked as if she slept little, and not well. I took the chance to glance around the room; most of the people here were men, Cambodians; most of the rest were Chinese and Vietnamese, with only a few Westerners in plaid shirts and jeans or crumpled white tropical suits, one or two in khaki with shoulder flashes ripped away.
'C'etait bon?' I heard Gabrielle asking.
'Excellent. How was yours?'
'Pas mal.'
'Would Jacques liked to have joined us?' He was at the bar, his untidy head touching the fringe of the canopy.
'No. He never joins anyone.' She looked for the boy.
The lights came on again, flickering and then steadying, and I said, 'Is Pol Pot expected to make a final try for power?' It had been in the news for a while.
Gabrielle's eyes had widened at the sound of the name. 'Everyone thinks so, here. Everyone is afraid.' 'But you're more informed than most.'
'I think the same as everyone does. It is not just fear, although we all feel that. From my… sources of information, yes, I believe he will make a final attempt to seize power, now the UN has left. And if he does that, we'll have the Killing Fields all over again.' Our serving boy came for the dishes, and it occurred to me that Gabrielle preferred not to use French in public places because it was the second language, though English was catching on fast among the students. 'Would you care for some li-chee?' she asked me.
'Just coffee.'
She told the boy, and when he'd gone I said, 'You believe Pol will launch an armed attack on the city?'
'Perhaps, but no one knows. The UN took their intelligence services with them.'
'Has the Khmer Rouge got a base here in Phnom Penh?'
'Yes, but we do not know where it is any more. Pol has moved it, and taken it underground. But we know it is still here. We see his agents.'
She'd turned her head as she said that, looking towards the tables near the grandiose archway of chipped plaster and gilt that led to the hotel lobby.
'One of them is over there?' I asked her.
'Yes.' She turned her head back. 'The man at the corner table, sitting alone.'
I'd noticed him earlier, simply because I knew his type, recognized the attitude, his body language, his stillnesses, the way he moved his head, always slowly, his eyes moving with it, passing across the target without stopping, passing back. I had also identified the target, the man he was keeping under surveillance.