The attacker was effortlessly potent. Annika was tugged and pulled all the way down her path, past her trash cans, past her little flower bed, out onto the track that led to the Cham des Bondons. Sharp, cold skies sang the night; Capricorn spun above her.
Where were they going? The stones? It had to be. She, it, this white-faced thing, this monster was dragging Annika to the stones. Again the Belgian woman tried to scream; again she heard nothing. Had she gone deaf?
No. She wasn’t deaf. She could hear the coarse and rasping breaths of the killer, the animal-like panting. She could hear the sounds of her own body slishing over the dewy turf as she was hauled along by the hair.
The stones awaited.
The nearest stone to her cottage was one of the tallest, the Soldier, three brutal meters of impervious granite, a pillar of black in the black of the night: she saw it coming toward her. The stone was standing like an executioner, medieval, in a horrible black hood, waiting to do a silent duty. The killer lifted Annika into position. He, she, it — this thing jerked back Annika’s head. The monster was going to smash her head against the rock. Just slam her skull into the stone, crushing the cranium. The front of the cranium. Yes, of course.
In her last moments Annika thought of her e-mail, in her laptop, waiting. Pulsing in the light. Unfinished. Everything she had done in her life had come to nothing; even this one last attempt at honesty. The first hot tears ran down Annika’s face as she stared up at the sky, as the killer pulled her head back as far as it would go. Ready. Ready to slam her forehead against the rock. To smash open her skull and pulp her living brain.
Annika wept for the end of her life. The stars above the stones were like a million fireflies, in a dark and freezing jungle.
15
The road out of Phnom Penh, once the road of ghosts, was now a cavalcade of makeshift Asian capitalism run amok: cyclos and fuming buses and whining motos and angry Mercedes passing impromptu gas stations where tinkers sold bottles of pilfered gasoline from suspended glass vessels. The liquid in the big upside-down bottles was blood-red and urine-yellow. Jake thought of men turned on their heads, leaking blood.
“Yes,” said Ty. “Let’s try the National, the new one in Abu Dhabi.”
Tyrone was sitting next to Jake in the back of the taxi, but Ty was apparently talking to someone in Jakarta. Or maybe Sydney. Or Hong Kong. He was schmoozing and huckstering, pitching and charming.
Jake envied Tyrone his contacts and his ruthless ambition, almost as much as he envied Tyrone his war stories, that elegant war weariness. Oh yeah, Bosnia, been there, done that, saw a brain in the road. Jake did sometimes wonder if Tyrone actually played up to the image of the cynical, war-weary correspondent; perhaps Ty had molded his persona to fit the cliché.
Whatever the answer, Tyrone McKenna had been doing it long enough that he really had become the stereotype, par excellence. The hard-bitten hack with hair-raising tales from global war zones.
Jake was glad Ty was with him; Jake was not so hard-bitten. Jake was properly scared.
“And let’s try Tamara. Yeah. That new ed at the Observer mag, slept with Marcus Dorrell — you hear that?”
Corralling his nerves, Jake locked his camera lens on the view through the window and took photos.
He didn’t want to think about their impending meeting with the spider witch of Skuon. It was cartoonishly unsettling, like a cheesy anime film come to life. Leaning out of the taxi, he took a photo of a garish, blinging red Buddhist temple surrounded by big, black, cockroach-glossy Toyota SUVs. Gangsters’ cars.
They were on the outskirts of Phnom Penh now, heading past the airport. Aimless concrete buildings straggled along the hot and disintegrating road; a mobile phone outlet, adorned with lurid pink balloons, stood next to a butcher’s shop with three orange pigs’ heads on a counter — and then Jake glimpsed the first dusty sparkle of paddy fields.
He was glad they were leaving the city: it meant less chance of their being successfully pursued. Any one of the cars around them in the city could be the police sent to arrest him, or just someone sent to do him in. But outside Phnom Penh, Jake could see exactly who was following, if anyone.
No one was following.
Calmed, a little, his thoughts reached for Chemda, working in the UN’s Extraordinary Tribunal, the Khmer Rouge Courthouse — not far from here, in the big building near the airport, where a handful of old men confessed to killing a hundred thousand little children. Every day, five days a week, eight hours a day.
Chemda had immersed herself in her UN court work by day and paperwork on the death of Doctor Samnang; she and Jake had talked long into the night. Yet Jake didn’t quite know what to say to her during these phone calls, so they had talked about other stuff, their lives, their daydreams, school days, the origins of Buddhism, the origins of penang curry, anything. And the conversation alone seemed to be enough, meandering and mutual reassurance: we are in this together, please be careful. Watch your back on Monivong.
“So, Ty.”
The American clapped his phone shut. “Yup?”
“Let’s go over it again — the plan.”
“I thought we did all this?”
Jake set down his camera on his lap, stared at it for a second.
“We did, but… indulge me? This is pretty unsettling stuff.”
“Fair point. OK. We are what we are. I’m a journalist, you’re a photographer.”
“Working for?”
“The Bangkok Post, that’s quite a big paper. Important enough to make the witch sit up, not so important she will actually, like, check. We’re doing a story on her, how famous and powerful she is, the Neang Kmav, the best sorceress in Cambodia. These people are vain, and they like to whip up business—”
“You sure she’ll buy this?”
“As long as we pay cash, and lay on the flattery, she’ll buy it.”
“Then we slip in a question?”
Ty nodded. “We certainly try. Play it by ear. We ask her about famous clients, rich notable Khmers. Because whoever ordered the kun krak has got lots of money. These aren’t bits of dead toad you sell to the villagers to cure their sniffles; smoke children are very, very expensive to procure, upper-class juju, aspirational. She must be proud of having such a prosperous customer. We’ll try and get a few names.”
The next question almost didn’t need to be asked, but Jake did: “And the risk, the downside, the worst that can happen?”
“She guesses who we are. She freaks. She casts a spell on you and turns you into a gecko. She tells her clients and they come after you. But Jake, what does it matter? You already have the Laos government on yer ass. You’re fucked, you’re double fucked, you’re a first-time virgin on a porno shoot and King Dong is in the studio.”
“Jesus.”
“Trying to make you laugh. So you won’t be scared.”
“Too late, I’m scared.” He forced a very weak smile. “Nice image, though. Thanks. Why did you never win a Pulitzer?”
“Dunno,” said the American. “Strange, isn’t it? But maybe this story will do it: New Yorker, front cover, ten thousand words, ‘Kiss of the Spider Witch.’” He stared at Jake with those been to Chechnya eyes and he sighed. “That was a joke. I’m joking. This is your story. I just want to help. And I can help. We simply have to keep our nerve.”
“And how do we do that?”
Tyrone’s shrug was not so reassuring. “She will try to scare us, try to spook us out, that’s how these people operate. Don’t fall for it.”