‘Blu-ray, huh?’ She snorted. ‘You’re a lucky man, we just got a new reader for this type of media; some asshole broke the last one.’
‘Nice to see you too, Magui. How’s life treating you?’
‘Like a used condom. Follow me, both of you.’
Magui turned and left the room, expecting them to follow. Felicia gave Striker a look as if to say, What’s up her ass? and he just shrugged.
That was Magui for you.
They followed her into the adjoining room. It was another featureless office — tables, chairs, a video unit. Striker and Felicia took a seat at the table and waited as Magui looked at her watch and frowned, as if she had other pressing matters to attend to, matters much more important than this one. She turned on the television, loaded the disc, hit play.
And all at once, Striker was watching the shooting again.
What struck him as odd this time was his own reaction — it was no different from any of the other times he’d seen the footage. By now, after seeing it so many times, he’d expected its impact to have lessened, at least a little.
But no, it was just as devastating.
When the video was finally over, he unclenched his fingers and looked at Magui. The scorn on her face had been wiped away, but it was not replaced by shock or pity or even terror. A look of dark intrigue covered her face, ugly as a birthmark. Without saying a word, she got up and fiddled with the Blu-ray player.
Felicia leaned into him and whispered, ‘This bitch gives me the creeps.’
Striker nodded. ‘Maybe so, but we need her — she speaks eleven languages, for Christ’s sake.’ He looked back at Magui, and got down to business.
‘Can you tell me what they’re saying, or not?’ he asked.
‘Don’t be absurd. Of course I can.’ Magui reset the disc and replayed the feed. When they reached the point where the gunmen came face to face, just prior to dragging out and killing the boy dressed as the Joker, they began to talk. Magui translated.
‘Target One and Target Two eliminated. Target Four not located.’
Striker listened to the words. ‘ Target?’
‘This is the most correct translation.’
Striker retreated into himself, let the words sink in. Target. The word disturbed him, not because of the meaning, but because of the context; it had been used with purpose, instead of ‘she’ or ‘he’ or any real names. There was only one reason to do this, and that was to dehumanize the victims and desensitise the gunmen. Even worse, it wasn’t the language of some socio-pathic students or crazed murderers. It was the language of mercenaries. Soldiers of Fortune. Pros.
It was goddam military speak.
Striker looked at Felicia, who had stopped eating her Caramilk bar. She caught his stare, bit her lip.
‘This is not good,’ she said.
‘Couldn’t be much worse.’
Magui spoke loudly, cutting them both off. ‘The greater concern,’ she said, ‘is not what they are saying, but how they are saying it.’ When Striker didn’t respond and just waited for more information, she continued: ‘They’re speaking Khmer.’
Felicia shrugged. ‘Which is?’
‘Well, essentially, it’s Cambodian. But the words are more clipped and more formal than that of the modern-day society. Which would suggest that these two men grew up in the seventies — a very bad time for that country. Mass murder. A full-out genocide.’ She sat down in one of the office chairs, swivelled to face them. ‘You ever hear of the Killing Fields?’
Striker nodded. ‘You’re talking about Pol Pot’s regime.’
‘That is exactly what I mean.’ She gestured towards the two masked gunmen on the feed. ‘You may well have uncovered someone who was a part of that regime — or even worse, a survivor of it.’
Felicia, who had remained patiently holding her tongue, finally leaned closer to Striker and spoke up. ‘Okay, forgive my ignorance here and fill me in — who the hell is Pol Pot?’
Striker looked at her like she was crazy. ‘He was a dictator, Felicia. One of the worst the world has ever seen. Killed three million people.’ Striker gave a deep sigh then continued, ‘Pol Pot turned children into soldiers. Made them kill their parents. Ordinary women and children were starved and raped and tortured into giving false confessions. Almost a quarter of Cambodia’s entire population died because of his regime.’
Striker looked back at the image of Red Mask displayed on the monitor and recalled the eyes of the gunman. So dark. So cold. So dead. When he saw the morbid curiosity in Felicia’s eyes, he didn’t want to say the words, as if speaking them might make it true.
But she had to know it.
‘We’re talking about the Khmer Rouge.’
Sixty-Seven
The midday sun ruled the sky, one giant ball of white flame. It gleamed off the steel gates of St Paul’s Hospital and glinted off the damp red brick of the building.
Red Mask saw this spectacle, and all at once, he reared at the memories the image brought back. Reared so hard, he almost dropped the jar he was holding, and that most certainly would have been a great — perhaps deadly — mistake.
His body trembled. He wavered on the hospital steps, recollecting the images of Section 21. They were horrific. And he could not understand why they preoccupied his mind. He had not thought of that dark place in years. In most ways, the two buildings were entirely different. Style, size, even colour.
But something took him back to the time when he was eight years old. The worst time of his life. And then, without searching, he found the answer. It was the sun, beating down upon him with the same blinding white intensity it had every single day of the Angkors’ occupation of Cambodia.
Beating down upon his father as he toiled in the Killing Fields fourteen hours a day, his frail accountant’s hands cracked and bleeding, under the watchful eye of machine-gun guards.
Beating down upon his mother as she was hog-tied and raped for eleven days before the guards got bored and slit her throat.
Beating down on him and the other children as they were thrown together into that dusty pit where there was no food or water or safety from the guards.
Beating down upon them all with as much mercy as the Angkor offered.
Which was none.
Red Mask felt his body wilting from the cruelty of his thoughts. Where were these memories coming from? He was a man now, not some eight-year-old child — not Child 157. That boy had died long ago.
‘The spirits,’ he found himself saying. For there could be no other reason.
He closed his mind and willed his feet to move. And though his body listened, his mind was not as obedient. With every step, the memories of that time became clearer. The images more vivid.
Until he relived the nightmare all over again.
And Mother was screaming.
Screaming.
Screaming…
Her ungodly cries filled the camp all night. Like the other nights, there was much laughter from the guards — cruel reptilian sounds — as Mother cried out for her ancestors to save her, or at the very least deliver her quickly into death. But the hours passed and her cries went unanswered.
Child 157 balled up in his cell, in uneven rows with the other children. Some of them writhed in hunger, some in pain. Others had not moved for a very long time. He barely noticed them; Mother was all that mattered. Her voice was everything. He tried to drown out her cries, to pretend he had no knowledge of what was happening to her. But he knew. He always knew.
At day’s end, when the guard entered to pour broth, Child 157 was quick to steal the key from the ring the man so lazily left hanging on the wall. The moment the guard finished his duties, Child 157 began prying the thin flesh of his ankle out of the shackle that bound him to the floor.
It was a slow and agonising task.