“Miss Kerrigan, you have strong pheromones? Perhaps you are premenstrual? This is an unusual reaction. He is reacting to you.”
She shook her head.
“Please. This is disgusting.”
He bridled. “But why? What is so disgusting?” His expression was an uncomprehending sneer. “This is just science!” He seemed affronted. “If you are offended by this then you should talk to the Chinese!”
“What the hell does that mean?”
Yakulovich shrugged. “Exactly what I say? The Soviet Union sold all its data to the Chinese in the 1980s, when we were too poor to defend ourselves. Indeed, I asked Barnier what had happened to our research, how it had progressed in the East. He could not be explicit, he refused. But this is what Barnier told me.” The director sighed, expressively. “Barnier said simply this: ‘The Chinese took it much further.’ Who knows what they did, Miss Kerrigan, who knows? The Chinese! They are entirely without scruple, they are the new Roman Empire, who will govern us all!”
Sergei Yakulovich turned back to his favorite prisoner and stroked the orangutan’s forehead. Crooning in mumbled Russian. Julia stared at the bleakness. The drizzle was falling again, the stench of shit was pervasive, the orangutan was stroking his scarlet penis, and the little rhesus monkey was still shrieking, running to one side of the cage, and screaming, and running to the other side, and screaming. Julia gazed at the sad eyes of the orangutan. Sad and crying, yet guiltless. There was no conscience there: just suffering.
Suffering. And libido. And rage.
In a single second Julia was unsure what she saw. Yakulovich sailing backward; the great long arm of the orangutan extending past him; and suddenly a dark and heavy flash as the ape leaped toward her. Julia seemed to pivot away, on instinct, and run. But the ape had her, it grabbed at her neck and pulled her brutally to the floor. She tried to struggle free, writhing on the damp ground, skidding her heels against the rain and urine and concrete, but the animal was enormous: huge and pungent.
Now she could feel the large, inhuman hands between her legs. Ripping her panties away. Julia gasped.
And the little monkey was still screaming, running across the cage, and screaming.
30
The blow didn’t come. He waited. Still nothing. Khmer voices rose to a clamor, more voices: many voices, shouts even. Jake opened his eyes, looked left: beside him the soldier was still wielding the rusty iron bar, ready to execute him and Rittisak. But the iron bludgeon was hanging, unused, and the soldier himself was gazing offstage, with a distinctly nervous expression.
Why?
Villagers, at least a hundred of them, coming down the path from the main road, shouting and yelling and clutching ugly long knives and hatchets and machetes and old Russian rifles. Even pitchforks.
He glanced Chemda’s way, the tiny fledgling of hope in his heart. Chemda had shrugged off the uncertain grasp of her captors, and she was marching to greet the mob. Despite her ragged flip-flops and her muddy skirt and her dirty hair, she still looked like a Khmer princess, bold, proud, self-possessed: she was talking with the villagers, they were smiling at her, waving their fists in triumph and anger, gesturing furiously at the soldiers: the captors.
They were being rescued. The would be executioner dropped his cudgel to the ground and backed away. Raucous shouts apparently demanded that Jake and Rittisak be unhandcuffed.
The youngest soldier nodded, and humbly shuffled up, and turned a key behind Jake’s back.
He was uncuffed. Rubbing his raw wrists, he stood in the hot sun and stared at Chemda. The incense from the offerings to Pol Pot perfumed the smiles they exchanged, frightened smiles. Rittisak was also released. Jake crossed to Chemda’s side, walking around the low grave.
“Why…” He was almost muted by the reversal.
Chemda told him, “Your friend. He did this.”
“Tyrone?”
“Yes. Ah. So they say, these people. He has contacts here and he called them last night and asked them to help us, to watch out for us, and he said they should help us because of what I do.” She gestured at the triumphant crowd of Khmer peasants in their vests and kramas and dirty sandals.
“They know I am trying to get the Khmer Rouge imprisoned, and they want me to go on with my work. They want me to bring the tyrants to justice.” Her dark eyes looked up at his. A shine in the dark tropical depths of her eyes told of her emotion. “I thought they were going to kill you. Jake, I thought they were going to kill you.”
“Trust me,” said Jake, “so did I.”
So he had Tyrone to thank for his life. Of all people: laconic, selfish, hard-assed Tyrone McKenna. Jake felt a surge of love for his cynical friend, and he smiled at his own sentimentality.
But he was also swallowing the vinegary aftertaste of his intense fear. He breathed deep and long. His leg muscles were still weakened from the terror, and he felt like he might just crumple to his knees, right here and now, by Pol Pot’s graveside. He had been oddly calm, the moment that Death had approached, Death the dull functionary, Death who casually took his sister and his mother, Death the offhand commander of the killing fields.
But now he had survived, Jake was suffering the emotional aftershocks. Palpitations. The sweats. He tried to assert control over his own reflexes. Breathing deep.
A few meters away, the Khmer villagers were yelling at the soldiers, who were now silent and cowed. One of the locals walked up to the apparent leader of the squad and simply took the submachine gun from the soldier’s weakening hands.
The large eyes of the young Khmer soldier blinked rapidly, in anger or terror, or cowardly relief. But he did not move. He was rigid. Jake realized the soldiers were now, probably, in fear for their lives: outnumbered a hundred to one, caught by an entire village in the act of brutal, Khmer Rouge— style execution, in a region riven with loathing for the Khmer Rouge. The troopers knew they could die, any minute.
“We mustn’t let them kill them,” said Jake to Chemda. “The locals, they can’t kill the soldiers.”
Her face was contorted with disgust, but she nodded. “You’re right. Ah. They don’t deserve to live, but you are absolutely right. We need to be… inconspicuous.”
“And we’re still stuck, Chem. There’s no way we can just sneak down the ravine, not now, there are other policemen around—”
She shrugged impatiently. “So we’ll have to cross the border, at the official frontier.”
“No way. Come on. They’ll stop us and send us to Phnom Penh.”
Her frown was fierce. Jake gazed around at their rescuers. A possibility evolved in his mind.
“I have an idea. We could ask these people… to help? To come with us? With all of them we have a chance.”
Chemda didn’t even reply: she turned and she talked with the villagers. The villagers nodded and yelled, urgent and keen. And Chemda was smiling a half smile.
“They’re going to help.”
The crowd moved as one. Jake realized it was working. They were being escorted to the frontier. The soldiers were left behind, guarded and disarmed. The huge crowd of locals was now walking boldly up the burning sunlit road to the frontier, just a few hundred meters away.
As the mob approached the border, Jake saw the look of astonished alarm on the faces of the Khmer customs officers in their little glass kiosk. The officers had obviously been briefed to watch for escapees matching Chemda’s and Jake’s description; they had surely been told to stop them and arrest them at once, to prevent their crossing. But they obviously hadn’t expected Jake and Chemda to be accompanied by half of Anlong Veng.