Elliot had done his homework. He already knew much of what Tuk was telling them. ‘I’m banking on a decreased presence because of the continuing border confrontations with the Vietnamese in the south,’ he said.
‘Then you are banking on a fantasy,’ Tuk replied. ‘You must realize, Mr Elliot, that the regime of Pol Pot is neither rational nor sane. I myself heard the famous broadcast from Radio Phnom Penh last year, which claimed that one Kampuchean soldier was capable of killing thirty Vietnamese, and that, therefore, only two million Kampuchean troops would be required to wipe out the entire population of Vietnam.’ There was contempt in his smile. ‘They are sacrificing thousands of yotheas — child soldiers — in the border war with Vietnam. Children of ten and twelve years, Mr Elliot. And if they refuse to fight they are shot in the back by their own people. As I understand it, Phnom Penh has committed only thirty to forty thousand troops in the south, while the Vietnamese have massed around a hundred and twenty thousand along the border.’
Slattery glanced at Elliot. ‘Tougher than you thought, then, chief?’
Elliot seemed unfazed. ‘I need more first-hand intelligence on the ground we’ll be covering. It makes it all the more important for us to talk to refugees who have recently come through the north-west sector.’
There was hardly a breath of air in the sheltered silence of Tuk’s garden. The late morning heat was intense, the humidity rising. Slattery finished his drink with regret and felt the now familiar tightening across his chest, a dull pain growing acidly from somewhere deep inside his solar plexus. His concentration wandered as Tuk sat back languidly in his chair, dabbing his forehead, clearly in a mood to talk. ‘What do you know of Democratic Kampuchea, Mr Elliot?’ he said.
‘Only what I’ve read in the newspapers,’ Elliot said. ‘There isn’t much information coming out of the country.’
‘Enough to know that there has been genocide on a massive scale.’ Tuk sipped at his drink. ‘Stone-Age communism, the Vietnamese call it. Even the Chinese, who have backed Pol Pot from the start, are embarrassed by what has been happening since he took power. The Khmer Rouge are giving communism a bad name. They have been trying to build what they see as a classless society, based on an agrarian economy. They have emptied the cities, wiped out their intelligentsia. Anyone who could read or write, or speak another language. If you wore glasses you were shot as an intellectual — even if you had been no more than a simple fisherman. They are fanatical, almost beyond belief. Even Stalin would have been shocked.’
He leaned back reflectively, enjoying what he knew, savouring it from the security of his villa in Sukhumvit Road, passing it on to lesser mortals with a careless generosity.
‘The strange thing is that it is a peculiarly Cambodian phenomenon. These are Cambodians destroying fellow Cambodians. Incestuous genocide. You must speak to a Cambodian friend of mind about it.’ He glanced at his gold wristwatch. ‘If you care to have another drink while you wait, she will be here very shortly.’
‘Wouldn’t do no harm, chief,’ Slattery said eagerly.
Elliot shrugged. ‘We’ve nothing better to do.’
The drinks came and Tuk spoke for some time of Thailand, of the Prime Minister, General Kriangsak Chamanan, a moderate military figure, he said, who had cut back Thai support for the Khmer Serei — the Free Khmer — guerrillas who were based along the border and dedicated to the downfall of the Khmer Rouge. Elliot seemed to Slattery to be listening with interest, but Slattery himself had no interest in any of it. He looked around the garden, reflecting on how good life could have been. Not that he had been disappointed by his forty-odd years. He had enjoyed most of them, living often close to death, something that always somehow heightened the pleasure of life itself. How could you really know life, he thought, until you had faced death? But he had never had money. Not real money. How differently he might have felt about life, and death, if he had. But, then, he thought wryly, even money can’t save you from the Big C.
It was Slattery, lost in his thoughts, who saw her first. Radiant, all in white, stepping through the French windows. He blinked in case he was dreaming. She was, he thought, the most beautiful woman he had ever seen. She wore a calf-length, white, cotton dress, cross-cut in a deep V over her small breasts and tied loosely at the waist by a red cord. Silken black hair cascaded over her shoulders, so black it was almost blue as it caught the glare of the sun. Her skin was the colour of teak, her eyes a deep, almost luminescent brown. There was just a touch of rouge on her fine high cheekbones, a hint of blue on the lids of her eyes, the merest trace of red on her full, wide lips. She moved with a slow assured elegance across the lawn and he realized that she was tall, perhaps five-six, and not of pure Asian blood. Tuk rose as she approached, and Elliot turned his head to see her for the first time. And he knew from that first moment that she was something very special.
‘My dear,’ Tuk said. He stood and made a little bow. She kissed him on each cheek in the French manner and took his hands in hers.
‘Than. You are well, I hope?’ she said with an accent that owed more to French than Cambodian.
Tuk smiled with genuine affection. ‘Of course,’ he said. ‘But I have no need to ask it of you. You are radiant, as always.’
She inclined her head in acknowledgement with the assurance of one accustomed to admiration. Slattery saw now that she was older than she appeared. Tiny lines around the eyes and the mouth, a slight loosening of the skin at her neck. She looked thirty, although she could easily have been forty, or even more. But age enhanced rather than diminished her beauty. She was flawed only by her lack of innocence. A look, knowing and calculated, in her eyes. She turned, ignoring Slattery, and looked directly at Elliot with an unwavering gaze of naked interest. ‘Are you not going to introduce us, Than?’
‘But, of course. La Mère Grace, Mr Elliot. A business associate from England.’
‘Oh? And what kind of business are you in, Mr Elliot?’
‘I make war,’ Elliot said.
She offered him a cool hand, small and perfect, which caressed his for the briefest of moments. Then she looked at Slattery. Tuk said, ‘And Mr Slattery.’
‘And do you make war also, Mr Slattery?’ she asked.
‘Only when I get paid.’ Slattery grinned and added, ‘But I prefer making love.’
She raised an elegant eyebrow. ‘Then we have much in common. I, too, prefer to make love. But only when paid.’ Her eyes flickered back to Elliot.
Tuk watched with amusement. ‘Grace runs the best brothel in Bangkok,’ he said. ‘Please, do sit.’ They all sat and Tuk called for another drink.
‘Brothel is not a word I care to use,’ La Mère Grace said. ‘It has... connotations. My girls entertain only the most discerning of clients. I have other establishments to cater for the more basic clientele.’ She looked again at Slattery. ‘We can cater for almost every taste.’ Slattery shifted uncomfortably under her gaze, feeling like a book that had just been read and discarded.
Tuk offered her a cigarette and lit it, then lit one for himself. He did not extend the offer to Elliot or Slattery. She took tiny puffs, exhaling the smoke through pursed lips.
‘La Mère Grace ran the most celebrated house in Phnom Penh until the early Seventies.’ Tuk leaned back and ran a hand through his hair. ‘She only just escaped the country before the Khmer Rouge took over. Unfortunately she was unable to bring her girls with her.’
‘I very much fear they were killed by the communists,’ she said with no apparent trace of regret. ‘I have had to find and train new girls. Thai girls.’