They had loaded the boat with every fuel can it could safely carry, in addition to themselves and their packs, and it was almost nightfall when they finally pushed off from shore, dangerously low in the water. At little more than walking pace, they had headed south, a hundred metres offshore, hugging the shoreline which they could see brooding darkly, first by starlight and then, when it rose, by the pale light of the moon.
McCue and Elliot took turns at the helm in two-hour shifts. The two women slept, curled up in the bottom of the boat, waking up to bale out only when the water they were shipping began to slop about their faces.
At dawn they had been spotted, from shore, and fired upon by a ragged Khmer Rouge patrol. McCue, then at the helm, had gunned the motor and turned the boat quickly out across the lake until the shore was a distant smudge on the horizon. He had then resumed their southbound course and adopted a slower pace to conserve fuel.
As the sun rose through the day, the heat became unbearable, eyes burning in the glare and reflected blaze from the water. Only the faintest relief came from the breeze created by their slow progress south. They improvised headgear by cutting up a sleeping mat, and McCue contrived a makeshift awning to provide a tiny area of shade at the prow of the boat, using a sleeping bag and two crossplanks. They took it in turns to squat, uncomfortably, under its protection.
Slattery was still a presence among them, like a ghost. Although the subject had never been raised, the anger burned deeply still in McCue’s eyes. Elliot’s sullen silence seemed devoid of remorse. Serey had watched them both for long periods. She had read the anger in McCue’s eyes, recognized the hatred that simmered there. It was something she had seen many times before, in the early days of the Khmer Rouge, before all those angry young men with hate in their hearts had forgotten their justification for killing, and death had become an end in itself. It was the dead quality in Elliot’s eyes that frightened her most, a chill, emotionless quality that glazed rather than burned — windows without reflection on a man without a soul. Ironically, it was this that had made her decide that, should she ever face a choice, she would side with Elliot. It was with him, she had concluded, that the best chance of salvation lay. Not for herself — she hardly cared any more — but for Ny, if that were at all possible.
She glanced frequently at her daughter, distressed by her brooding silence and outward calm. She had mourned the loss of Ny ever since the girl had plunged Elliot’s knife with such ferocity into the soft belly of the young cadre at the commune, severing not only a life, but the last lingering ties between mother and daughter. The shock of it was with her still. She had understood then, as now, why. And with understanding had come guilt, as if she were somehow responsible. Should not a mother lay down her life to protect her child? And yet she had done nothing, said nothing, all those nights when the cadre had come and taken Ny off in the dark.
Once, as she was baling out water with a tin mug, Ny had caught her mother watching her, and Serey averted her face, ashamed to meet her daughter’s eye. She had failed her. Nothing could be the same between them again. And she felt tears filling her eyes. Ny watched her for some moments then turned back to her task with a leaden heart. Her mother, she knew, was ashamed of her.
Elliot had been aware of the change of pitch in the engine for some time. It was slight, almost imperceptible, but it rang an alarm in his head. McCue heard it also, raising his head and glancing towards Elliot with concern. Elliot shrugged, and they waited, through what seemed like eternal minutes, for confirmation of their fears. From that initial change in pitch, the rhythm of the engine had begun to falter and choke, like phlegm gathering in its throat. Elliot swung the rudder in and turned the boat in the direction of the shoreline, gunning the engine to carry them faster towards its distant, hazy outline. Serey and Ny were alerted, sitting up and watching with alarm. The outboard finally coughed and spat before choking on its own failure.
In the silence that followed, the sound of McCue clambering to the stern of the stricken boat seemed unnaturally loud, echoing across the stillness of the water.
With no exchange between then, the two men loosened the clamps and pulled the inert engine on board. McCue made a quick examination. ‘Ain’t fuel,’ he said.
Working with oily, black fingers, he took the outboard apart and reassembled it several times without success. Elliot had watched, with growing despair, as they drifted further and further away from the safety of the shore. McCue tried again, pulling repeatedly on the starter only to hear the engine cough into life and then choke again, like a sick man’s dying whisper.
Darkness had gathered quickly from the eastern shore, before finally enveloping them and ending their hopes of repairing the engine before dawn. McCue’s face had flickered briefly in the light of a match as he lit a cigarette. ‘Shoulda killed us all when you had the chance, Elliot,’ he said grimly. ‘We’re as good as dead now.’
As the moon rose, they drifted, helpless, further out into the watery vastness of the Tonle Sap. Elliot knew that he had finally lost control of his own destiny. If there was a God, then they were all in his hands. He felt no fear, just an inner numbness, as when a man has swallowed a bottle of pills and succumbs drowsily to the onset of the final sleep. His mind turned away from looking back on the wasteland of his life, and there seemed little point in looking forward, since he could see no further than the dark night that surrounded them. He took a final draw on his cigarette and threw the last inch of it away into the night, hearing the briefest sizzle as it hit the water. Fatigue engulfed him. He turned at the sound of a whisper at his side, and found himself looking into Ny’s pale, moonlit face.
‘We going to die?’ Her voice seemed very tiny.
‘Sure,’ he said. ‘We all die sometime.’
She dropped her eyes and shook her head in frustration. ‘No, I mean...’
‘I know what you meant,’ he interrupted her.
‘Then, why—’
‘Because I don’t know!’ There was irritation in his voice.
A long silence in the dark. Then, ‘My mamma is shamed of me,’ she said. Elliot glanced quickly at the dark shape of the older woman lying sleeping in the bottom of the boat. ‘Because I kill man.’
‘Are you ashamed of yourself?’ he asked.
‘No.’ Her voice was hard. ‘He deserve to die.’
Elliot shrugged. ‘Lot of people do.’
‘Like your friend Mistah Slattery?’
A seed of anger grew for a moment inside him, but failed to germinate. ‘No,’ he said. ‘He didn’t deserve to die.’
‘But you kill him.’
‘I’ve killed too many people to draw distinctions.’
‘I no understand.’
He sighed. ‘No. Most people don’t.’
‘But if he no deserve to die, why you kill him?’
For a moment he studied the earnest child’s dark eyes that genuinely sought answers, and wondered why it should matter to her. Then it struck him that his daughter would probably have asked the same questions, and he was glad he would never have to face her, never have to tell her the truth, or face it himself.
‘If you are a soldier, if you are prepared to kill — for whatever reason — you must be prepared to be killed.’
‘And you are soldiers? You and your friend?’
‘Yes.’
‘I no understand. What is your army?’
Elliot searched for another cigarette, then remembered he’d smoked the last one. ‘We have no army,’ he said irritably. ‘We are soldiers of fortune.’ And he pre-empted her ‘No understand’ by adding, ‘We do it for money.’