Read Phnom Penh Express Online
Authors: Johan Smits
That afternoon, he had made a short reconnaissance excursion to Street 240. It hadn’t taken long to see that it wouldn’t be easy breaking into that chocolate house. First, there was a solid pair of large, wooden front doors. Even if he could pry them open, he’d have to get through a second set of doors, made out of glass. Chances were, they too would be locked. Moreover, he’d be too exposed from the street side. As for the windows, they not only had shutters but were also iron barred. To top it off, Billy had later noticed a night guard arrive on bicycle. He would undoubtedly be staying inside the house — probably asleep, but still...
He watches a couple ordering dessert. They are the only other customers left and would probably leave quite soon, Billy speculates. He touches his pocket and feels the little, rectangular bulge of the GSM3000D listening device. Reassured, he finishes his couscous while trying to think of a suitable name for tonight’s mission. He decides on ‘Calling Charlie’, like back in Nam. Billy never fought in Vietnam, he was too young for that, but he almost feels like he did, considering the number of war movies he’s watched over and over again. ‘Charlie this’, and ‘Charlie that’, and ‘let’s get Charlie’... He likes the sound of it all.
By the end of his afternoon excursion, Billy had finally found a solution to accessing the chocolate house. The Tamar Hindi restaurant was only two doors away and he’d gone up all the way to its rooftop terrace where he’s sitting right now. He’d ordered coffee and had noticed how, from the terrace, he could easily access the adjacent roof, belonging to some boutique, Couleurs d’Afrique. And from there he could finally climb onto Charlie’s roof. Billy had spotted a window in the roof; a potential entry point. It didn’t have all those metal bars. But it had seemed too exposed to the street, making a break-in risky, even at night. Billy had then finally decided he would still enter the house through the roof, but on the other side. Charlie’s roof was covered with tiles, so it shouldn’t be too difficult to remove some and bust a Billy-sized hole.
Billy finishes eating. To his chagrin, he had not been able to enjoy a bottle of red with his meal — he self-imposes a drinking ban while he’s in the field. He had returned to The Tamar Hindi over an hour ago and is now watching the boy lead his girlfriend down the stairs as the waitress starts clearing their table.
Billy pours himself more mint tea and patiently waits for the right moment. When, finally, the waitress leaves, Billy jumps quickly up. He tosses enough money on the table to cover his bill with a generous tip, then shoots towards the back. There’s plenty of space to hide behind the earthenware pots of huge, tropical plants. When the waitress returns she should naturally assume that he has left. Then all Billy would have to do is wait for the restaurant to close.
***
It’s two thirty in the morning when Billy finally emerges from his hiding place. He had wanted to make absolutely sure that the restaurant would be deserted. He stretches his legs painfully and starts with a five-minute warm-up. All those years of desk jockeying haven’t done his physical condition any favours at all; if only he had made it as a Special Agent. He takes a few deep breaths and cracks his fingers. Phase two of operation ‘Calling Charlie’ is about to commence.
Tonight’s moon is half-f (Billy is an optimist) and he wonders what would be best. The brighter the moon, the more visible he’d be; the darker the moon, the more difficult it would be to crawl over rooftops. He walks carefully to the far end of the terrace and quietly climbs over the low wall. Crossing the neighbour’s roof turns out to be easy, and with each step that Senior Intelligence Officer William H. Stoppkotte takes, his confidence grows. He moves very cautiously, shifting his weight from one foot to the other while keeping his balance under control — and by the time he arrives at the other end of the Couleurs d’Afrique boutique, he considers himself on a par with TV’s Agent Bauer.
Then something unexpected happens. Billy has to pee.
“Damn it!” he curses in a muffled voice, but he can’t help it, nature’s call is very insistent. Must be all that goddamn mint tea, he thinks, and he frantically tries to find a solution for his urgent logistical problem. Billy presses himself into the moonlight’s shadow at the edge of the chocolate house’s wall and looks around to make sure he isn’t in anybody’s field of vision. His position on the roof’s sloping surface isn’t ideal but he manages to open his fly and starts urinating. The relief it brings is instantaneous. While he’s moving himself back into combat position, Billy starts hearing a low but regular beat; a ticking sound. It’s the sound of liquid obeying the law of gravity. Then almost immediately he hears a man shouting in Khmer:
“Choi mai!”
Billy’s Khmer linguistic abilities are severely limited but still good enough to recognise the word ‘motherfucker’. Damn it, he thinks, and quietly moves himself back into the shadow.
“You little fuck!” he hears the man shout in Khmer, followed by the hysterical laughter of a few woken up motodop witnesses. Billy doesn’t need to master Khmer in order to figure out what the furious man on the street is yelling towards the invisible bastard who just pissed all over him. What would Jack Bauer do now? Billy decides to stay still until the storm passes.
Half an hour later, after making sure it’s absolutely quiet, Billy continues with his ever-more delicate mission. The most challenging part still has to come, he knows. The self-proclaimed WATT Commander carefully pulls himself onto his target’s roof, which is even more sloped than the previous one. It takes him a good thirty minutes before he secures a reasonably stable position from where he can try and make a hole in the roof through which he could enter.
One by one, he starts to remove the heavy stone tiles; presently, Billy is soaked in sweat. After twenty minutes, he evaluates the result of his endeavours. The opening he has created is large enough to grant him entry into Charlie’s headquarters and with renewed determination Billy continues with his nocturnal break-and-enter. He slowly lowers himself into the dark hole until he feels his feet touching solid floor. So far so good, so far so good, Billy thinks, trying to keep his nerves in check.
It takes him a couple of minutes before his eyes adjust to the interior darkness. Then Billy starts to move slowly. He can make out the faint contours of a sofa, a closet, a low coffee table, some chairs... Damn! Someone must be living in here, he realises. He thought the entire building was dedicated to making chocolate — the ground floor to production and sales, and first floor to stock or something — but that’s clearly not the case. How could he have missed this? Billy slowly opens a door that he hopes will reveal stairs leading to the ground floor. Nothing. He enters what seems to be an artist’s atelier. Strange sculptures and bizarre objects are scattered all over the room. He tiptoes past an abstract painting on an easel.
“Goddamn rubbish,” he whispers to himself.
As far as art is concerned, Billy has always fallen on the conservative side. The closest he has ever been to buying a work of art was when some guy in New York tried to sell him a one-metre-tall Statue of Liberty replica, cast out of red, white and blue candy. But he didn’t buy it in the end, for fear that it might be anti-patriotic to lick the Liberty Lady. That was shortly after 9/11 and Billy hadn’t risked it, no matter how much of a sweet tooth he has.
Billy takes a deep breath and continues with his search for the staircase. He can’t find it. Goddamn architect, he thinks while pushing open a pair of low saloon doors. He expected to find a kitchen but — just in time — he notices the void in front of him: the staircase.
“Finally,” Billy sighs with relief and praises himself lucky — he could have easily missed it and fallen all the way down. That surely would have torpedoed his mission instantly.
He slowly descends the stairs, striving not to make any noise. There’s still a guard somewhere to be reckoned with. When Billy finally enters the production area he touches the GSM3000D in his pocket to reassure himself it’s still there.
Moments later he finds himself in the middle of the room. He smells the aroma of dried cocoa still clinging to the insides of the two melting machines, and through the darkness he manages to recognise several wide racks lining the entire length of the wall opposite. They’re hoarding hundreds of plastic moulds. For a second Billy forgets himself, fascinated by the sights and smells. Momentarily, the aroma of the chocolate transports him back to his childhood. Then he quickly pulls himself together. This ain’t no trip down memory lane, he thinks, I’m in the middle of a goddamn field operation!
Billy starts looking for an appropriate spot to plant the bugging device. It should be somewhere central, to cover an area as wide as possible. When he looks up he’s staring straight at one of the large, metal lamps hanging from the ceiling. Perfect, he thinks. If I attach the device there, nobody will be able to detect it from down here. And absolutely no chance a cleaner would bother dusting up there.
It doesn’t take Billy much time to mount the steel work table, affix the GSM3000D onto one of the lampshades, activate the device and climb down again. Finally, the mission is running smoothly, he thinks, looking at his watch. He’s doing well for time. He turns, steps towards the staircase and abruptly trips over the guard sleeping on a thin mattress on the floor. Billy lands painfully on the hard mosaic tiles while also knocking over a chair and a plastic bucket — left behind by the cleaner — dousing the night guard with water. The chair falls into one of the racks and a split-second later hundreds of plastic moulds come tumbling down with a loud clatter.
The wet guard, a slender Khmer man in his late sixties, shakes his head like a dog in the rain, stands up and fumbles for the light switch. The moment the room is bathed in light, Billy’s cellphone goes off.
“Goddammit!” he curses, getting up and, in his panic, pressing the answer button while the wet guard regards him in disbelief.
“Hellooooo?” a tinny girl’s voice emits from Billy’s cell. On top of everything, the speaker is switched on.
For a few moments the night guard and Billy face off, staring at each other while the crackling voice floods the room. Then the guard points at Billy’s mobile.
“Tooresap,”
he says, the Khmer word for telephone.
Bewildered, Billy looks at the phone in his hand and, as if in a dream, holds it up to his ear.
“Hellooooo? Daaarling? You miss meeeee?” the voice says.
Horrified, Billy immediately takes the phone away from his ear and looks at the small LCD display. ‘Lyda’, he reads.
He hastily turns it off. He should never have given his number to that bargirl in Handsome Man. And he should never ever forget to silence his damn phone when on a secret mission.
Billy clumsily stuffs his phone back into his pocket. The night guard keeps looking at him with a mixture of curiosity and sleepiness. The Cambodian man then turns and shuffles towards a small closet at the end of the room.
Billy panics. His mind races. Shit shit shit... Agent Bauer’s phone never went off at such critical moments. Billy watches the guard reaching for something in the now open closet. It’s now or never, Billy thinks. I could knock the old guy out and escape. But before Billy can act, the guard swivels and points a bottle of Minéré water at him.
“Monsieur, teuk seut?”
he gestures, while miming drinking from the bottle.
Billy doesn’t answer. He’s far too confused for that.
“Teuk seut?”
the guard tries again with a tired but friendly smile.
The only words that form in Billy’s mind are ‘Abort Mission’. Then he takes a deep breath and finally manages a reply.
“Er...no,
ourkoun
,” he thanks the man in his best Khmer. “Sorry! Water, hah hah...,” he points towards the now empty bucket with a forced grin.
“Ot pang ha,”
the guard smiles, waving away the incident while not seeming to question Billy’s unexplained presence at all.
The guy must think I’m a guest of the people living upstairs, Billy speculates. Let’s get the hell out of here while I still can or before someone discovers the hole in the roof upstairs.
“Okay...now I go...,” he says pointing at the front door.
“Baat, baat,”
the old man concurs and grabs his key ring before leading Billy to the front of the room.
Six minutes later Billy is perched on the back of a motodop. The driver turns out to be the guy upon whom Billy unwittingly urinated. While recounting that disgusting misfortune to his passenger, the driver promises Billy that he would kill the bastard if he ever finds out who did it. Billy cautiously expresses his deep sympathy. Finally he arrives at the U.S. embassy.
“At last, friendly territory,” Billy sighs and quickly disembarks.
***
When Billy wakes the following day, it is already late morning. Last night’s exertions utterly exhausted him. He slowly gets up and takes his time showering and getting dressed. Then he has a large breakfast and after his third coffee starts writing up his taskforce’s first report. His evaluation of the mission is a mixed bag. The bug has been installed all right, but by now the old night guard must have found out that Billy had actually broken into the house rather than being invited. Fortunately, it was only the old duffer who clocked his face — so he should just lie low for the next couple of days and avoid Street 240. Not very practical, but doable — at least he could now listen in to goings-on inside that chocolate house.
Billy finds the number of the SIM card he had bought for the listening device. He programmes it into his cellphone under the name ‘Charlie’ so that he can easily call it whenever he fancies. The time on his watch shows 3:17
PM
. He dials Charlie’s number. After two tones a connection establishes and Billy hears some noises. A chair being moved...? Someone coughing — a man? Then nothing for a while. Billy keeps listening — there’s definitely a presence in the house. Then a loud exclamation he doesn’t understand — just a couple of words. Then more silence. Billy curses — he hadn’t considered that these terrorist bastards would speak in foreign tongues. How on earth could he have ignored this obvious fact? He concentrates again — more words.