“Where? Jesus! Is she OK?”
“She’s OK, probably, at the moment. Probably.”
The signal from Phnom Penh faded out. Jake sprinted up the steps to get better reception, waving at Julia as he did: wait here, this is important, sorry.
Tyrone was back on the line: “I did some investigating for you.”
“Like how?”
“I had a brainstorm when I got your message. Figured her dynasty must know something. I just went to the Sovirom house, the compound, and I did it — I confronted her mother. And she fessed up. She fessed up and broke down. They’ve had a kidnap note.”
“Who is it? The Lao?”
Jake stared at the dingy hotel parking lot. Julia was sitting on the steps, staring at the darkness. The boys had stopped guitaring songs. A rat was nosing between garbage bags, a fat and brazen tropical rat.
“Chemda is in China.” Tyrone sighed. “Yunnan. Right up by the Tibetan border, a place called—”
“Balagezong!”
An intake of breath.
“Yep. Jesus, Jake. Balagezong. How do you know that?”
Jake hastily explained — the conversation with Barnier, the terrible brain surgeries. Somewhere in Phnom Penh, Tyrone swore his surprise.
“Wow. OK. That makes sense. Total madness, but a lot of goddamn sense. So that’s what they are doing. And that explains why Madame Tek was so freaked—”
“What do you mean?”
Tyrone paused. “Prepare yourself. Really. Prepare yourself. I’m sorry. But through her crying jags I pretty much got the impression, from Madame Tek, that some physical threat had been made against Chemda, that they were threatening to do something awful to her, unless Sovirom Sen gave them what they wanted.”
“Which is? What do they want?”
Tyrone did a verbal shrug: “No idea. Maybe just money. But apparently he has flown to Yunnan, to meet them, to try and get his daughter back before they—”
“Cut open her brain. Section her brain.”
The rat squealed as it fought another rat for a piece of rotting carp head.
“Yeah. Yes. Sorry, Jake. I’m sorry. God. But yes, that must be the threat. Chemda’s mother was just a mess, crying a river, crying like the fucking Hudson.”
“I’m going there. Balagezong. I have to go there.”
Tyrone protested: “Jake Jake Jake. C’mon, calm down. I figured you’d say that — but c’mon — think about it, this is very very dangerous now—”
“Ty, they already tried to kill me. In Anlong. Can it get any worse? Now they are going to cut open Chemda? Turn her into some fucking zombie? I’m going, tonight.”
A very short silence. Then a long sigh. Then: “OK, mad Englishman. I’ll do my best from here. Try and get more information. I know you are Mr. Guilt Trip, but this isn’t your fault, Jake, you didn’t do this—”
“But I love her and she saved my life in Laos and I love her. I’ll call you from China.”
He broke off the call and stepped over to Julia. With as few words as possible he explained the situation. Her face trembled at the corners of her lips. Guilt spoke without words.
“So I’m going to leave tonight, now, sooner,” said Jake. “First I better go and tell Barnier, then arrange flights, to Kunming—”
Wordless and quick, they made the corner of Soi 6 and Soi 4 to Pachara Suites. It was just a three-minute walk, past the Seven Seas restaurant with the girls in old Singapore Airlines dresses, past the squid sellers with their racks of rubbery ganglions ready to char-grill.
At the last junction, they heard the ambulance sirens.
Sprinting around the corner, they saw it alclass="underline" the flashing red lights, the police cars askew on the sidewalk, and a man drenched in red paint being escorted from the lobby.
Jake watched, quite stunned.
It wasn’t a man in red paint. It was a Thai man in blood.
He was covered in gore, splashed energetically with human blood, and he was handcuffed and being manhandled by two policemen.
Crowds were gathered, people were hanging off balconies, staring down at the emergency, at the sirens and the unholstered guns and the swiveling red lights. At the man covered in blood being tugged toward a police car. Jake recognized him. The doorman from Pachara Suites.
He pushed through the onlookers, and two cops with white gloves, but another policeman stopped him from going any farther. Jake shouted across the yards that separated them.
“Hey! Supashok? You remember me? Supashok! Jake Thurby.”
The face turned.
“Supashok? Remember? I was with Chemda? The Khmer girl. This morning — you let us see Mr. Barnier? It’s me, Jake—”
The terrified man regarded Jake, and then he yelled. He screamed and he pointed:
“You! It was her — your girlfrien’! She kill him! I let her in then I hear scream!”
Jake backed away. A Thai policeman was pressing down on the doorman’s head, forcing him into the car. Supashok was still shouting at Jake, in English.
“She kill him. Your girlfrien’. Kill him!”
The cops weren’t listening to his screaming words; probably they couldn’t understand English. They didn’t know the doorman was accusing Chemda of killing Barnier. But soon the doorman would speak Thai. And explain. And soon the cops would get it.
Shrinking even further into the crowds, Jake grabbed Julia’s hand and they paced away, discreetly, and then less discreetly they jogged — and then they fled. Running from the blood, running from the scene, running down Soi 6, running past the Heidelberg German pub, where the hookers and the midgets sat outside on their bar stools cackling and laughing and eating rice noodles and saying, Meester, meester. Welcome, welcome.
36
“Guilt.”
“Why do you feel so guilty?” Jake gazed at her and shook his head. “Don’t think like that. You didn’t know.”
“If I hadn’t accused Chemda, she wouldn’t have run out of the bar — she wouldn’t have been snatched.” Julia rubbed her face with both hands. “I have two thousand dollars left, nothing to go home to, I have screwed it all up. Let me do this, let me come with you and try… and save her.”
Jake sighed. “But maybe you should at least have rung that guy. The policeman in France?”
“Rouvier.”
“Yes, him.”
“How could I?” Her eyes were bright and sad — and honest. “I’d have had to tell him everything. He’d have got straight in touch with the Thai police. Who would detain you, because you were implicated by the doorman, at the murder scene. Then you’d be stuck in Bangkok.”
It made sense. Jake knew it. He swiveled and squinted through the scratchy plastic of the window.
Julia added: “I’ll call Rouvier when we are safely in China. At some point.”
“Safely?” Jake almost laughed. He didn’t laugh. The Thai Airways jet was banking toward Kunming. The City of Eternal Spring. The capital of Yunnan. Monotonous blocks of housing stretched along a lake; factory chimneys trailed pennants of smoke. Polluting the future.
“She must be a relative, or something.” Julia’s voice was pensive, musing. “I don’t understand how they can be so similar yet different, sometimes a man, sometimes a woman. An identical twin would be a girl.”
“Chemda,” said Jake. That’s all he could think about. His lover. Chemda.
And the irony.
All his life he had wanted danger and risk, well, now he had it, but in the most unexpected way: he had the risk and danger of love. You fall in love with someone — you endanger your soul and your happiness. He saw that now. He was a war reporter of the heart. Taking those risks, capturing that… what? That thing. That moment.