Cambodian Book of the Dead (27 page)

There were times when Maier liked to remember the gentle attempts by his friend Hort to make him laugh, especially when there was absolutely nothing to laugh about. Those were the moments when he thought he could understand his dead friend Hort. Then the exploding landmine ripped away all his thoughts. The ground shook briefly. A cloud of dust rose from the tired earth. It was all over.

Maier, stunned, sat down on the temple steps. Absentmindedly, he put his hands into the pockets of his vest and pulled out a strange object. After staring at his find mindlessly for a short eternity, he recognised it as one of Carissa's half-smoked, crumpled joints. The detective lit up and watched parrots at play in the canopy on the edge of the clearing. Rolf Müller-Overbeck was going to be distraught. As Maier followed the exuberant dive-bombing of the small green birds that squawked above his head, his mind drifted away from the carnage and he experienced a sudden moment of almost absolute certainty. It was time to go and see his woman.

 

A MIRROR FOR THE BLIND

 

Sundermann had sunk deep into his wicker chair and watched Maier and Carissa fight over the best parts of the dinner they were sharing. Eclectic world music dripped from invisible speakers through the Foreign Correspondents Club. A faint breeze from the river cut through the heat.

Maier was pleased. His mission was ending back where it had begun. Down in the street, the hustlers, the limbless and the hopeless congregated just as they had for days, weeks, months and years. Tourists stumbled along, avoiding the drug dealers and taxi girls as best as they could, who with the minimum exertion required, tried to separate the visitors from their cash. A little circus of cross cultural absurdities.

But things were looking up. Cambodia was coming out of its self-prescribed dark age, blinking, insecure, proud and with so little care for her past that her very immediate future would likely be a happy one. Beyond the next ten minutes though, everything was speculation. The culture of impunity was the only ticket in town.

Other guests kept looking back at Maier and his partner. Some men walked past them several times. Carissa looked stunning. Her hair had turned white once more and her shiny green dress, tailored from Thai silk, perfectly complemented the large red ruby, suspended from a thin gold chain around her neck, which wanted to get lost in her cleavage.

Maier detested paperwork and had debriefed himself over an excellent seafood salad, several enormous wood-fired pizzas and many tall glasses of vodka orange. The orange juice was freshly squeezed and the detective was happy. Sundermann and Carissa were on their third bottle of Beaujolais, when Maier finally ended with his account of his moment in the minefield. Sundermann appeared to be as sober as at the start of the evening.

Maier had respect for his boss, who was ten years older, drank like a world champion and looked after the handful of detectives he employed like a kind uncle. And Sundermann had a discreet, if noisy style – suits by Armani, close shave, an expensive pair of rimless glasses, a tie for every occasion, a likeable open smile and a compliment or calming word for every client. Maier liked working with the best. He had learned, a long time ago, in his life as a war correspondent, that working with amateurs led to calamities. It was no different for detectives. He could trust Sundermann. Sundermann had come all the way to Phnom Penh to personally sign off on Maier's Cambodian adventure. And Sundermann always asked the right questions.

Just like Carissa. The journalist excused herself and Sundermann switched to German.

“Who is this Mikhail? A colleague?”

“First I thought he was just a cynic, a former mercenary, who wanted to take things in his own hands up there. But I guess he was a man with a plan.”

“An investigator?”

Maier shook his head in doubt.

“That man is an assassin, not a detective. He didn't hesitate for a second in that jail and he almost shot me dead. He also didn't defuse the explosives on the hotel roof, he just moved the clock of the timer forward.”

“So why didn't he shoot you?”

Maier hesitated, tried to process his thoughts from assumptions into usable information.

“It was a calculated risk. I am sure of that. This crazy Russian decided in that split second, with his finger on the trigger, that I could be useful to him. But how, I have no idea. Not exactly. I have my theories.”

Sundermann nodded.

“No, Mikhail was no Russian Rambo. I think he was a sleeper who had been waiting for something near that casino. I am sure he has a military background.” Maier looked doubtful. He knew that the chances of ever tracking down the Russian were minute. “Our research here in Cambodia didn't turn up a thing. Disappeared into thin air. Same at the borders, no sign of him. But that doesn't really mean anything, aside from the fact that he's a pro.”

“I know that. But it makes no difference. Maier, I have heard, from a source in southern Germany, that someone else was after the woman. Perhaps an associate of the White Spider. Or our friend Mikhail. Perhaps you were used to provoke the events in the casino. The question is, was there another case, some kind of mission going, in connection with Kaley, while you were in Cambodia? And does it have anything to do with Lorenz?”

“We know some of the answers to this already. Kaley's sister, one Daniela Stricker, who was killed by Tep or his son, had lived in southern Germany for twenty years. She had a German passport, and then turns up after all these years on Cambodia's coast and promptly gets killed.”

“That we know. But we don't know why she came back or whether she was connected to someone else in this story.”

Maier shrugged. “Perhaps she hired the Russian to find her sister. I am sure he wired the car at the temple. He planted the sticks in the minefield. In a way I finished his job for him. And mine. Quite brilliant.”

Sundermann didn't have to say anything. Maier knew his boss agreed.

“I have a feeling I will meet Mikhail again,” said Maier. “But I doubt we will find out exactly what his role was in all this. He is a slippery customer.”

Sundermann nodded thoughtfully and let it go. As he passed a sealed manila envelope to his detective, Carissa floated back onto the Foreign Correspondents Club's terrace.

“The notes for Laos,” Sundermann said. “Your next case. I trust it will be a walk in the park compared to your Cambodian mission. When you are done here, fly to Hamburg and meet your next client. I rely on you, Maier. Travel safely.”

Maier made a grab for the case files and an almost full bottle of wine and pulled Carissa away from the table and through the club. The world turned around them and Maier knew that everything was OK, would be OK. He would beat his traumas. He would start right away. Carissa would help him.

“Let's go to bed and celebrate.”

Carissa laughed, her eyes full of challenge. “Yes, Maier, let's party like never before, like there's no tomorrow.”

Maier was too happy and too drunk to think about her words or to notice the dark look simmering beneath her smile as they descended the broad stairs into the rubbish strewn street.

They jumped a tuk-tuk to the Hotel Renakse, a charming former royal guest house opposite the palace, a few hundred meters from their dinner party, and for Maier perhaps the most romantic place in the city. They propped each other up as they slowly walked through the hotel garden up the pebbled drive and through the colonial-era building's sparsely furnished corridors. The night was dark and cool. The floor tiles danced under their feet. A bird called from the river, answered by the cry of a lone drunk. Everything was good and Maier wallowed in his illusions, throwing furtive glances at the journalist, who responded with the happy-sad looks of someone hopelessly in love. This was the closest he might ever get to it. To something essential. Once in the room, they fell into a fever. Even youth was somehow with them and the last thing Carissa said to Maier as he drifted into sleep, burnt itself into his mind like a rust-coloured tropical sunset after the rains, “All through our dinner, I was on the verge of having an orgasm, Maier. You were the most handsome man in Phnom Penh tonight, no doubt about it. It's uncanny you came back here. And it's been good knowing you all these years. And so much more.”

When Maier woke in the morning, he was alone. Her smell still clung to the sheets, but he knew that Carissa had said goodbye. His life was empty and without worry, just as he wished it to be. It hurt. He got up and went to the bathroom to examine his psyche.

With bright red lipstick, she had written one of his favourite quotes on the mirror. “We live as we dream.”

 

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

 

Thanks to my family, especially my wife Aroon Thaewchatturat and my brother Marc Eberle – both played instrumental roles in getting me to finish
The Cambodian Book of the Dead
. Thanks to my friend Hans Kemp for embarking on an adventure called
Crime Wave Press
and helping to get Detective Maier on the road. Lucy Ridout did a great early edit.

In 1995, I crossed from Thailand into Cambodia at Hat Lek, racing in a speed boat up the jungle-fringed Koh Kong River, with troops dug in on both sides. The other passengers besides my travel companion and me were a man who had a suitcase chained to his wrist and a sex worker on her way home from Pattaya. The sky was gun metal grey. I was hooked. Cambodia is a land of stories, both beautiful and beautifully poignant – an obvious location for the first job for German detective Maier, a former war correspondent who investigates crimes around Asia. Throughout my many subsequent trips, I was touched by the friendliness of the Cambodians and shocked by what they have to put up with.

Those who provided insights: Youk Chang (at DCCAM), David Chandler, Soparoath Yi, Poch Kim, Luke Duggleby, Gerhard Joren, Roland Neveu, Kraig Lieb, Barbara Lettner, Jane Elizabeth, Jochen Spieker, Joe Heffernan, Chanthy Kak, Julien Poulson, Kosal Khiev, Chris Kelly, Tassilo Brinzer and Marie Phouek.

The amazing Emlyn Rees and the team at Exhibit A who took the plunge and put the shine to it.

Maier will be back – in
The Man with the Golden Mind
.

 

 

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

 

Tom Vater studied publishing, journalism and English literature in Oxford, before travelling around Europe, including the newly opened former communist states of Eastern Europe, as a punk rock guitar player.

He now works predominantly in South and South East Asia, where he writes in both in English and German. His work has appeared in a wide variety of publications, including
The Times
,
The Guardian
,
The Far Eastern Economic Review
,
Discovery
,
The Asia Wall Street Journal
,
Marie Claire
and
Penthouse
. He is
The Daily Telegraph
's Bangkok expert.

Tom spends most of his time on the road, researching stories and fulfilling assignments. His travels have led him (on foot) across the Himalayas, given him the opportunity to dive with hundreds of sharks in the Philippines, to criss-cross the US in search of former CIA agents and to witness the Maha Kumbh Mela, the largest gathering of people in the world. His countless journeys have left him stranded in dozens of train stations, airports and bus terminals around South Asia, Europe and the US.

On assignments, he's joined sea gypsies and nomads, pilgrims, sex workers, serial killers, rebels and soldiers, politicians and secret agents, artists, pirates, hippies, gangsters, policemen and prophets. Some of them have become close friends.

His most recent non-fiction book,
Sacred Skin
, is the first English language title on Thailand's Spirit Tattoos, co-authored with Aroon Thaewchatturat, and published world wide to huge critical acclaim in 2011.
Sacred Skin
has been the subject of two TV documentaries and has been reviewed in more than thirty publications, including
El Mundo
,
CNN
,
Die Zeit
,
The Wall Street Journal
and
Time Magazine
.

 

tomvater.com
 
 

twitter.com/tomvater
 
 

 

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Copyright © Tom Vater 2013

 

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This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and

incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author's imagination.

Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or

localities is entirely coincidental.

 

Ebook: ISBN: 978 1 90922 320 2

UK Paperback: ISBN: 978 1 90922 318 9

US Trade Paperback: ISBN: 978 1 90922 319 6