The Khmer Kill: A Dox Short Story (Kindle Single)

pressed. Maybe she wasn’t sure whether to trust him. Maybe she was afraid he would make her a bunch of promises, buy her off with some cash, leave without saying goodbye. Maybe she had decided sometimes you have to act as if something was true even if you couldn’t be sure, the way he had. It bothered him some, that she might have those kinds of doubts about him. It bothered him more that she had some reason. But he didn’t see what he could do about it.
    He stretched and cracked his knuckles over his head. Still no sign of the broker, but that was all right, it was only ten minutes to noon. He didn’t even know what the man looked like, only that he went by the name Gant and that a former Marine buddy had vouched for him. “Some kind of spook,” his buddy had assured him. “Agency is my guess. But could be Homeland Security, or maybe even NSA outsourcing the dirty work. Whoever he’s with, he’s got juice—ask for whatever hardware and logistics you want, he’ll get it for you pronto. And his money’s green.”
    He thumbed through his Lonely Planet guide, periodically lifting his eyes for a casual sweep of the approach to where he sat. Some Japanese tourists, clicking cameras at the Angkor-era statues in contravention of signs prohibiting photos of the exhibits. A Khmer mother and two small kids, making a picnic in the coolness of the veranda shadows. He couldn’t have seen more than a few dozen people since he’d arrived, and it occurred to him that the museum seemed to boast more artifacts than it did visitors. The place had a slightly strange feel—sleepy; half-forgotten; somehow provisional, as though the curators expected that any day they might suddenly have to crate up everything and move it underground. Habits of war, he decided. It’s not just the warriors who keep them after the conflict has ended. Civilians do, too, and maybe even more so.
    He liked Cambodia. He’d never been anywhere in Southeast Asia that didn’t agree with him, and it was no coincidence he made his home in Bali. Phnom Penh was seedy and hot and shit-poor, with colonial buildings stoically crumbling in the tropical humidity, and sidewalks so dilapidated they looked like they’d been bombed. There were pockets of construction—hotels and office complexes and such—but these only seemed to emphasize the parlous state of everything else. Families economized by riding three and sometimes four at a time on legions of motor scooters, there were beggars everywhere, and food was apparently dear enough that an overweight Khmer was nowhere to be seen. But despite all this, the place thrummed with optimism and hope. The Cambodians had been sodomized for centuries—the Vietnamese, the French, and most of all, the homegrown Khmer Rouge—but no matter how life beat them down, they kept getting back up. They hustled at work, strolled with their children along the river quay, and never stopped smiling. He’d read somewhere how a wild thing never felt sorry for itself, no matter how bad its circumstances, and that seemed to describe Cambodia, too. Certainly it described Chantrea.
    Gant showed at twelve o’clock sharp, a novice move. Either he wasn’t particularly tactical, or he wasn’t particularly concerned. Hard to know on short acquaintance. The man was unremarkable in every way: Caucasian; thinning brown hair, neatly cut; average size and build; a crisply pressed shirt, khaki pants, canvas shoes; expensive-looking sunglasses; a camera hanging around his neck. Dox looked more closely, and saw the camera was an older model digital Olympus, which he’d been told to watch for.
    Dox stood as the man approached—for courtesy, of course, but also because he preferred to be on his feet and mobile when greeting a stranger like this one. Gant’s hands were empty and his shirt was tucked, but Dox knew plenty of places a man could conceal a weapon besides around his waist.
    “This wouldn’t be Wat Phnom, would it?” the man said, the bona fides Dox had been told to expect.
    “No, you’ll probably want to get a tuk-tuk for that,” Dox replied, the other half of the prearranged exchange.
    The man held out his hand. “Dox?”
    They shook. Dox noted a reasonably firm grip that told him little about the man on the other end of it. “And you would be…?”
    The man smiled, apparently in amusement at the additional precaution. “Gant,” he said. “Why don’t we sit?”
    They did. Dox kept his tactical seat and Gant made no