Having learned how things worked in the prison, Kasper had prepared himself accordingly. When the men who had beaten him that first night came back, he was ready. The match was brief. They gathered up their injured and withdrew. But that was certainly not the end of it. The following day, they tossed him into solitary confinement, into a “tiger cage.”
A tiger cage is a ten-foot-deep hole, closed at the top with a metal grate through which they pass you shitty food and shitty water. When it rains, the hole floods, and then you must swim, along with the rats and cockroaches. Eventually you have to press your face against the grate and hope the water doesn’t rise any higher. A real nightmare for any prisoner, and the worst possible nightmare for someone who suffers from claustrophobia.
They left him in there for days, but ever since they let him out, they’ve steered clear of him. According to Chou Chet, the guard who’s been protecting him for some time, they’ve nicknamed Kasper “the Animal.” Chou Chet has explained that the money Kasper receives from his family in Italy will soon enable him, Chou Chet, to change his life for the better. “We’re friends,” he tells Kasper, in English.
“Friends, for sure,” Kasper repeats.
Kasper doesn’t want to die. He wants to walk away from Prey Sar on his own two feet and forget everything about it. Including the brute who barks at him.
The Kapo knows a few words of English, enough to communicate with the non-Cambodian prisoners, who constitute a tiny minority: a few Thais, two Chinese, a small group of Vietnamese. Among five hundred poor wretches, Kasper’s the only Westerner.
“Go to entrance.” The Kapo’s already pointing in the proper direction. “News for you.”
Kasper looks him straight in the eyes. Only for a moment. He doesn’t want a confrontation. Not today, of all days. Today everything has to go smoothly.
They’re both naked from the waist up. Both sweating, given the temperature in the 100s and the humidity that crawls under your skin. The Kapo’s checkered krama scarf is wrapped around his head. He stares at Kasper. His mouth barely moves when he repeats, “Go, Italian.”
Kasper heads for his “news.” He believes he knows what the news will be.
So here we are. Maybe it’s really going to happen. It is happening, on this Saturday morning in April, and he can scarcely believe it. He drags his Ho Chi Minh sandals and keeps a tight hold, both hands, on a precious nylon sack, hiding it as best he can. It’s camouflaged, wrapped up in a T-shirt.
He tries to put on his best mask. The time has come. He’s got to make it.
He’s got to.
He doesn’t want to end up like the others. Like the ones he’s seen in the past months and months. The tortured. The stomped-shattered-mangled. The drowned wretches facedown in the ricefields.
Kasper doesn’t want his life to end that way; he wants to go home to Italy. Today’s stakes are all or nothing.
But if he’s never to leave Prey Sar, if that’s his fate, then he’ll meet it like a soldier.
He squeezes the camouflaged bundle in his hands. Yes indeed, he will cause some shit before they take him out. Because, on this Saturday, April 4, 2009, dying seems preferable to the hell he’s been thrown into.
Whatever happens, one way or the other, Kasper’s leaving by the main door. Today and forever.
2
373 Days Ago: The Capture
Koh Kong, Cambodia-Thailand BorderWednesday, March 26, 2008
Clancy checks the outside mirror and the rearview mirror and wants to know how much farther they have to go.
“That’s the third time you’ve asked me that,” Kasper replies. “The third in an hour.” He passes a truck and gets back in his lane.
“So we’re getting closer all the time.”
“About twenty kilometers.”
Clancy takes off his sunglasses, blows on them, cleans them. “Nobody’s following us anyway.”
Good. With any luck, the whole thing’s bullshit, Kasper thinks. Nothing but a false alarm. Or maybe some stupid fucking April Fool’s joke, a few days early. But Bun Sareun’s voice on the telephone sounded serious. The Cambodian senator wasn’t joking.
“Leave town now.”
Not one word more. Only those three, repeated several times, in the tone of someone giving Life Advice.
Leave town now.
When Kasper hung up and told his American friend Clancy, he called the senator back. Not many words, zero doubts. “We have to get out of here. We can try to figure out what the fuck’s happening later.”
They filled two bags, grabbed two pistols, and took all the cash they kept in the safe in their house, roughly seventy thousand dollars. Now this nest egg is lying with Kasper’s change of underwear at the bottom of his black bag. Clancy’s bag is the same military duffel he’s had ever since he was an energetic young CIA analyst. It probably reminds him of years that won’t come again.
They left Phnom Penh hoping the whole thing was a crock; nevertheless, they’ve avoided airports, seaports, train stations, and any other potential checkpoints. They’re familiar with the Cambodian military. They know how its forces work. They’re especially familiar with the paramilitaries, the men in charge of the country’s internal “security.”
Which is why they had turned their Mercedes over to their driver, instructing him to take it for a long drive around the city. If he was stopped, he was to say he’d dropped them off a short time before near the Manhattan Club, Victor Chao’s casino-discotheque. They were careful not to pass by Sharky’s, the bar and restaurant they own together, but they called one of their employees and asked him to rent, in his own name, a sport utility vehicle. This machine turned out to be a Honda CR-V. They flung their bags into the back and left.
It was six in the evening. Darkness was starting to fall.
Their goal was the Thai border, just beyond a small town named Koh Kong. A meeting place for smugglers and whores. Six hours’ drive away.
Kasper called Patty, his Italian girlfriend. She’d been with him in Phnom Penh up until a few days before and had only just returned to Rome. Her leaving when she did was a piece of luck. On the phone, he stated only the essential facts of the matter. In a few words, without hesitations that could be interpreted or pauses to allow questions.
“We have to leave the city and probably the country.” His tone was unnaturally calm. “There are problems. We don’t know what they are. I think we’ll find out there’s been a mistake, but we want to be prudent. Don’t be worried. I’ll call you back as soon as I can.”
She asked no questions. And even if she had, the only response would have been a dial tone.
This isn’t the first time Kasper has found himself obliged to cut all ties with some place in the world. But it’s the first time he’s had trouble understanding why. And Clancy doesn’t seem to have things figured out any better than he does.
And so they start thinking about how their security was compromised. In Cambodia, it’s not hard to become a target, that goes without saying, but what could have happened?
The road to the