“That’s right.”
“So it wasn’t just about making me do something I didn’t really want to.”
Damn, not just smart, but relentless. “No. Now that we’re talking about it, not just that.”
She looked away for a moment, then back to him. “I can’t say I think you’re wrong about any of it.”
“I’m not sure that’s exactly a comfort, under the circumstances.”
“You’re an honest man, Dox.”
That hurt. “Actually, no, I’m not.”
“You are about the things that count. And you’re right. I like you a lot. If you make love to me, I’ll probably get attached to you.”
He couldn’t look at her. He felt like he’d been exposed as selfish and manipulative, and a hypocrite, too. And he was also ashamed at how Nessie had swelled at the way she’d put it. Not, “if you were to make love to me, I would get attached.” No, it wasn’t hypothetical. It was a straight-up if/then proposition, and entirely up to him, too.
“But you know what?” she said. “Even that’s not what you’re really afraid of. Not really.”
He looked at her, reluctant to respond, unsure of what was coming next.
“What you’re really afraid of,” she said, reaching over and laying the backs of her fingers across his cheek, “is that you’ll get attached to me.”
She might have been missing some other things, but she was surely right about that. And the only thing that kept him from saying fuck it all and taking her in his arms then and there was the thought of the business he would be taking care of the next night. He was here for a job. It was crazy to get involved in any other way. He wouldn’t let it happen.
Chantrea left for class at eight the next morning. Dox immediately checked the secure site. There was a message waiting from Gant: Rubie’s, corner of streets 19 and 240, noon. He checked it out online and saw it was some kind of wine bar. He already knew the neighborhood — a collection of relatively swank houses and upmarket boutiques — from previous reconnaissance. He didn’t have a problem with it, preferring a public place for a meeting like this one.
On impulse, he Googled Rithisak Sorm. No Wikipedia page, but there were a number of news articles about arrest warrants and Uncle Sam pressuring the Cambodian government to extradite him for trafficking. The Cambodians claimed Sorm wasn’t even in Cambodia, he was beyond their reach. More likely, he was being tipped off and protected. Regardless, what was available supported Gant’s story. There were no photos of Sorm — apparently, Khmer Rouge record-keeping wasn’t quite as squared-away as the Nazis’ had been — but Dox was satisfied with what he’d found.
He showered, dressed in unobtrusive tourist attire, and headed over to the hotel restaurant to fuel up. The staff had long since come to recognize him, and the hostess, the guy making the omelets, and the waitress pouring his coffee all greeted him with a delightful sampeah and a cheerfully accented, “Good morning, Mr. Dox.” He liked the sampeah, which was similar to the Balinese sembah that had become second nature to him on his adopted island. There was something so friendly about greeting someone by pressing your palms together, fingers up, at chin level. The sembah and sampeah and the Thai wai and the Indian namaste; the Chinese and Japanese bow; the western handshake…. it was funny how, all over the world, the original function of a salutation was to show the other person you weren’t holding something dangerous. Politeness determined by the eschewal of a weapon. Peace as the absence of war.
He killed nearly an hour with four trips to the lavish buffet: steamed crabs from Kep; star fruit from Indonesia; a profusion of baguettes and croissants and cheeses, the happier legacies of the French occupation. While he ate, he saw the hostess and a hotel manager seating several foreigners at a large circular table in the center of the restaurant. They were dressed in local business casuaclass="underline" creased pants and pressed shirts, no jackets, no ties. He watched handshakes and business cards exchange; heard English greetings in various accents. German, French, something Scandinavian he couldn’t place more precisely. NGOs, he guessed — nongovernmental organizations, in town to save the country from who knows what. Maybe they were even part of the UN meeting Gant had mentioned.
A few minutes later, two fit-looking Khmer guys in identical gray slacks, white button-down shirts, and practical-looking black shoes entered the room. They spoke briefly with the manager, who nodded deferentially and then stepped away. Dox noted both guys were wearing earpieces. Obviously security of some sort. They’d scan the room next, and Dox tucked into the last of his star fruit, feeling nothing — no worry, no hostility, no exceptional alertness, just a relaxed, comfortable, quiet oneness with his surroundings. He felt himself just as much part of the room as the tables and chairs, and would be equally unremarkable to the bodyguards, whoever they were.
After a few moments, he stretched and glanced around again. The bodyguards had taken up positions alongside the entrance. A Khmer man in a navy suit had just come in — full head of luxurious gray hair, erect posture, a relaxed and confident stride. A younger Khmer guy, also in a suit but not as well fitted, followed close and deferentially behind him. The manager greeted the older guy with a notably humble sampeah, his pressed palms high and his head low, then ushered the two to the table with the foreigners, all of whom stood at their approach. There were handshakes all around and more greetings in English. The older guy took a moment to introduce his younger companion, who seemed ill at ease, perhaps at the presence of so many foreign VIPs.
Dox glanced at the bodyguards. Their postures were alert, but not unduly so: clearly, they’d satisfied themselves that the room was secure. If they were basing that conclusion on no more than a visual scan, their principal must have been of some importance, but not, say, a president or foreign minister, who would have prompted an advance team of explosives experts and bomb-sniffing dogs and a retinue larger than just two. Still, whoever he was, he was somebody with some clout — his carriage, the deference with which the manager had greeted him, the presence of the flunky, the way the foreigners had stood at his approach. He was talking to them now, and though Dox couldn’t make out the words, the Khmer had the poise of a gracious host. For some reason, he reminded Dox of the Dalai Lama — the hair and the suit were wrong, of course, and this guy wasn’t quite that old, but he had the same air of compassion, confidence, and, what… gratitude? Yes, a kind of pleased gratitude, nothing servile about it. And an appealing twinkle of humor in his eyes, too, which did nothing to diminish his aura of gravitas.
Dox finished his breakfast and made his way to the door, offering a sampeah and a smile to each member of the staff he passed. Though he couldn’t hear their conversation, the Khmer seemed to be holding a kind of genial court among the foreigners. Dox paid them all only the barest moment of casual attention, which was no more than the bodyguards paid him as he passed their position and headed out into the bright Phnom Penh morning.
The sun was midway to its apogee but it wasn’t excessively hot yet, so he decided to walk to Rubie’s. Easier to check for followers walking than it was from the back of a tuk-tuk, anyway. He crossed the street and strolled past the imposing iron and concrete walls surrounding the American Embassy. It was odd to behold such a fortress of officialdom on his way to such an unofficial meeting. The bars and walls and guard posts all seemed to declare his status as unacknowledged, unaffiliated, unwanted. And yet here he was, on his way to do their dirty work. Well, no one ever said the world had to make sense.