What could five border policemen do against maybe a hundred angry people with knives, guns, and rusty machetes?
The crowd fell into an oddly solicitous silence as it met the white wooden boom that marked the Cambodian frontier. Jake saw the blue-and-red stripes of the Thai flag fluttering languidly from a flagpole, a hundred meters farther on; he saw Thai faces leaning to the window in the glass-and-steel office, observing the strange scene unfolding on the Khmer side of the border. Behind the Thai officers, he could just make out the kindly portrait of a bespectacled King Bumibhol of Siam, hanging on the wall.
Jake wiped the sweat from his eyes and assessed the situation. He knew they would have little trouble getting into Thailand. Their passports were in order: British and American citizens could enter Thailand freely and get a visa anytime.
But Jake and Chemda still had to cross the Khmer border first. Would his plan work?
The Cambodian officers inside their kiosk were making frantic phone calls. Two of the officers had guns drawn — the revolvers were laid significantly and blatantly on the counter before them. But the crowd, still ominously silent, moved closer, gathering around the kiosk. The sheer weight of numbers threatened to topple the little building; the sad little office, with its sad men inside, rattled and vibrated.
Victory came quick. The guards surrendered: behind their grimy panes of glass they did deep submissive bows, with their praying hands high above their heads: they were doing the high wai, the deep inferior samphae of total submission.
The fattest Cambodian border guard urgently beckoned Chemda and Jake to his little hatch, past the white barrier. His hands were shaking and sweat was dripping in long rivulets down his chubby, frightened face.
Wordless, he took their passports. He glanced at the crowd behind the barrier.
He stamped Chemda’s passport, he stamped Jake’s passport. With the same weak, unspeaking demeanor he waved them on. His face said, Just go, please. Go. Now.
But Jake lingered for a second, savoring the moment, this tiny refreshing moment of his victory, in all the recent tragedy of flight and defeat; Chemda walked over to Rittisak, who was smiling, at the front of the crowd. She hugged him.
Then she ran back and took Jake’s hand, and they walked the hundred meters of no man’s tarmac, to the bigger, glassier office on the Thai frontier.
“Sawadee kap!” said the Thai border guard. He glanced down at their passports. His smile was brief, but subtly meaningful. “Thirty-day visas?”
“Yes,” said Jake, “thirty-day visas.” He clutched Chemda’s hand. “Kappunkap.”
Jake found them a cab to Surin, a badly abused Toyota Corolla with a fat Isaan driver and maybe thirteen monastic amulets hanging from the rearview mirror. He gazed ahead of them as they motored past the cane fields, and so did Chemda. Their mutual good mood, their sense of wide-eyed astonishment, at their own gruesomely belated good fortune, had already dwindled; it was entirely gone by the time they reached the train station, whence they had decided to catch the night train to Bangkok. To Bangkok and Marcel Barnier.
At the station, Jake took out his little camera. He still had this precious new camera with the precious photos. He had lost his sister’s photo, but now he had new photos. The slight sense of resurgent possibility elevated his mood once again. Get the story. Pin down the past. Defeat the world, just for once. Be a real photographer. Yes, he could still do that.
At a newsstand in the station Jake picked up a copy of the Bangkok Post; he was surrounded by Thai workers reading manga. Half interested, half anxious, he flicked the pages as Chemda bought the tickets.
But he soon stopped flicking pages.
The Post had an article about him and Chemda. UN worker missing from Phnom Penh… granddaughter of Sovirom Sen, noted Chinese-Cambodian businessman… photojournalist linked to the disappearance….
The article was very small, and tucked away, and neutral in tone: it didn’t accuse Jake of anything, but it did mention the reward for Chemda’s return, and the mere fact that the article was printed in the most important Thai English-language newspaper brought the rest of Jake’s unease surging back. Who might try and claim that reward? And how?
The afternoon hours ticked by until the night train’s departure. Jake drank bottled water and cans of cold Japanese coffee and sat nervously on a station bench, next to Chemda, both of them trying to be inconspicuous. He telephoned Tyrone.
Tyrone told him to shut the fuck up and stop being so “minty” when Jake tried to say thank you, you saved my life. Tyrone listened to the epic story of their escape from Siem Reap, and swore and even chuckled, and his good humor helped dispel the darkness, just a little.
Tyrone asked: “So you’re going to Bangkok?”
“Yes.”
“To find Barnier. You don’t give up, do you?”
“Not after all this, Ty, no, I don’t. You said I had a good story and I’m on it. I want it. And Chemda wants the truth. What happened to her family. But we need somewhere to stay, incredibly discreet. Near this guy’s apartment, in Nana. You know Bangkok. Any ideas?”
“Yes… The Sukhumvit Crown, Soi 8, you can only find it if you go the wrong way down Soi 6.”
“Anything else? Any other advice?”
“Stop walking across lakes filled with corpses.”
“Ty. Please God. Ty!”
“You should buy new sim cards for you and Chemda, now you are in Thailand… use True, no, DTAC, just give a few people the numbers. Use the phones sparingly.”
“Thanks.”
“Mai pen rai. Stay in touch. And remember, you are still in serious shit. People will come after you in Bangkok. They won’t do it openly, but they will try. Be very, very, very, very fucking careful.”
As instructed, Jake went straight to the nearest convenience store, at the front of the station, and bought new sim cards for himself and Chemda; they swapped numbers, he texted the number to Tyrone. He sat down on the bench again. Waiting. Passengers came and went, eating fishball noodles at the fishball noodle stalls. Amputee beggars lifted their stumpy arms, pincering plastic cups of loose change. Commuters yawned. Policemen patrolled. Their train was ready. They climbed on the carriage.
They had bought first-class berths mainly because first-class berths had a tiny shower. The shower was risibly small but Jake didn’t care: as the train rumbled out of town he stepped straight in and rinsed away all the mud of the Butcher’s Lake, and all the grease from Pol Pot’s house, and all the dust from Preah Kahn, where Sonisoy was taken. He only wished he could sluice away the terrifying memory of kneeling there, in the dirt, by a shrine to the ghost of an atheist dictator, waiting for a man to casually smash his brain through his mouth with a rusty iron bar.
Crack.
Chemda was already fast asleep in the bottom bunk. She had held his hand as she fell asleep, but now the hand was limp and unconscious, and he folded it onto her breast, and he climbed the bunk-bed steps to slide between his own crisp, clean white cotton sheets. The sensation was unfathomably blissful.
The train was rattling through the dark Isaan countryside. The comforting rattle of a train, ta chakkating over the points, soon lullabyed Jake into sleep.
Most of his sleep was undisturbed. He woke just once, when they pulled into a hick little station with moonlit palm trees, at about five a. m. Hushed voices muttered outside in the tropical stillness. Jake sweated in the airlocked compartment. Who was that? Outside? Someone quietly passed down the train corridor, seeking a berth, whispering. He waited, tensed with fear. But nothing happened. Chemda’s unconscious breathing was regular and low.