'You know his name?' I asked Gabrielle.
'No. I only know he is an agent of the Khmer Rouge.'
The boy put down two small gold-crested cups and poured coffee for us; I could smell the kerosene on his hands. He looked very young, was probably not long out of school, was possibly still at school, one of the children Gabrielle hoped to photograph one day being blown to pieces in the sunshine, so that the rest of the world would wake up.
'And who is the man sitting near the far end of the bar?'
'With the gold-rimmed glasses?'
'Yes.'
'He is the Minister of Defence, Leng Sim.'
'It's safe for government officials to move around in public?'
'Not very. But he is known for that. He openly defies the Khmer Rouge. There are others like him, but not many, now the UN has gone.'
'Do they blame the UN for pulling out?'
She gave a little shrug. 'The UN began its peace-keeping operations with good intentions, and the conference in Tokyo was also well intentioned, but no one wants to go on protecting a country like this one, where there is no oil, no industry, no economy after twenty years of war and bloodshed at the hands of the Khmer Rouge — a country where poverty and disease and pollution have brought down the average life expectancy to thirty-six years, even without a shot fired. But we have to get help from somewhere, from someone. That is why I take my photographs.' She leaned towards me, her small, calloused hands clenched on the table. 'I have the blood of these people in my body. My grandfather was an administrator here as a young man under the French rule, and he married a Cambodian girl. So I understand them, from a source deeper than the intellect. I feel for them. I cry for them in the night. And I have to believe that if I and people like myself — like Jacques — work hard enough we can stir the compassion of the rest of the world, so that our little world out here won't be bled to death again in the Killing Fields.'
She leaned back, toying with her coffee, not meeting my eyes any more, regretting, I thought, having given herself away like that, exposing her fears, her anger — this was my impression. As a photo journalist in what amounted to a wartime theatre she was expected to keep her nerve, control her emotions, let nothing show but what she intended to show through the lens of her camera. But what she'd told me explained her colouring: she would be called by the people here — her own people, to a degree — a 'round-eye', but she had the raven black hair and the ivory skin of a native.
'You say Pol Pot has moved his base in Phnom Penh,' I said in a moment, 'and gone underground. What about his guerrilla forces?'
'He has moved those too. They used to be in the south-west jungle, near the Thai border, but they've gone from there, according to reports.'
'Reports or rumours?'
She gave a shrug. 'One cannot always tell the difference. The reports often come from long-term foreign aid workers in the outlying provinces, but no one in the capital can really trust their word — Pol is quite capable of spreading disinformation, old Soviet style, without their realizing.'
The Minister of Defence over there was paying his bill.
'Poi's forces are well armed?' I asked Gabrielle, and turned my head slightly the other way. The Khmer Rouge agent was beckoning to his boy, also wanting to pay.
'Very well armed. He rebuilt his forces after the government attacked his jungle hide-out in August.'
I finished my coffee and looked at my watch.
'It's late,' Gabrielle said.
It was just gone eleven. 'I've got to make a phone call,' I told her, 'that's all. It's four o'clock in London.'
'I'm going up anyway. I need sleep. How is the jet lag?' She got out a black snakeskin wallet.
At the edge of my vision field I saw the minister leaving his table and moving across the room. 'It doesn't seem to affect me. You've been very kind,' I told her, and took her hand. 'Au plaisir?'
'Mais oui. Au plaisir' I left her paying the bill.
The Khmer Rouge agent was going through the lobby and I held back for a moment to keep my reflection out of the glass doors and then followed him into the night.
4: MAH-JONG
There was no moon, but the streets had the stark look of a lunar landscape, with patches of glaring neon and black shadows between where the lamps had gone out. Through the windscreen of the Peugeot I could see the curved roof of a temple, decorated with the great eye of a god outlined in red with a gilded pupil.
Nothing moved in the street; it was more than an hour after curfew. The air pressed down from a hazy sky, its sticky warmth moving through the open windows of the car; it must still be eighty degrees across the city, less than an hour before midnight.
They were waiting in the Russian Zhiguli that was parked nearer the main street, Achar Hemcheay, where it ran diagonally across the centre of the town. The agent I'd followed from the Royal Palace Hotel had got into the front passenger's side of the Zhiguli; the driver had already been there behind the wheel.
The Minister of Defence had got into the black Chevrolet at the comer, nearer the hotel, less than a minute ago. His driver had started the engine and I saw the lights come on. The agent's driver in the Zhiguli had had decent enough training: he'd stationed it between two other cars and facing away from the Chevrolet, relying on the mirror to keep it in view; there was quite enough room available for a U-turn.
I was out here, really, just to keep my hand in after six weeks' absence from the field; there'd been an obvious surveillance set-up in progress so I thought I'd move into it and practise the routine. I knew now what that man Flockhart had sent me into Cambodia to do, but he must be clean out of his mind. I would have signalled him from the hotel after I'd left Gabrielle, and told him to pull me out of the field, but I wanted to go through with this little exercise now it had started.
It was going to be distinctly tricky because there wouldn't be much traffic to afford cover; there'd be nothing on the streets at this hour except for police, military, or Foreign Aid Service transport. There were some lights crossing the intersection at 136 Street now, but I couldn't see what kind of vehicle they belonged to.
The agent was armed. I'd seen him adjust the holster strap under his jacket when he'd got up from his table in the restaurant.
The Chevrolet was in motion now, pulling away from the kerb. The Zhiguli started up but didn't move until the target vehicle was nearing the intersection; then it made its U-turn and took up the tag. I waited ten seconds and fell in behind at a distance of fifty yards with the lights off, turning at the intersection and rounding the Central Market and taking a side street parallel with theirs, gunning up quite a lot to come abreast until I could see their lights and keep station.
There was a problem after a minute or two because the streets converged and I was directly behind the Zhiguli again and none too distant. I'd switched on my lights when some other vehicles had shown up — two military jeeps and a van with Catholic Mission on the side — but they were out again now. The Chevrolet had taken a couple of side streets as a matter of routine and come back to the main thoroughfare — a government driver would know the rudiments of evasive action and this one might even suspect the Zhiguli by this time — and we were keeping station roughly two intersections apart, and it was now that I saw the gun.
The lights of the Zhiguli were out at the moment and it was silhouetted against the bright street background, and from the movement inside it I saw that the agent on the passenger side was reaching into the rear and bringing the gun across the scat, a heavy short-barrelled assault rifle.