The Brittle Limit, a Novel (31 page)

Andrew had seen the rocket launch, had heard
the brutal fracturing of history. But it was too late for that.
Beneath him, the monk smiled at Andrew as the silver chalice
detonated, one of hundreds of simultaneous explosions that ripped
through Wats across the Cambodian provinces, all synchronized with
the rising sun. As Andrew’s body absorbed the full impact, as the
blast ripped across and through him, he thought of the hollowness
of the vessel that exploded into him, how the empty can be filled
with good or evil.

*******

In Phnom Penh, the skies were rapt in the
throes of dawn. The submarine had stopped by the broken bridges.
The Veterans stood on deck looking at the wreckage. Severine sat
next to Frank, watching the sunrise in the east. Samnang slept next
to them.

Severine’s phone buzzed with a text message.
She hoped it was Andrew. She’d been trying to reach him to explain
that the men had insisted they go to Phnom Penh but she’d no luck
reaching him. She glanced at the text and read the message, her
mouth agape. She grabbed Frank’s arm.

“Read this. It says it’s from the Prime
Minister. He’s telling everyone to stay away from the Wats today,
to go home. Now. Says a terrorist attack is imminent.” She looked
hard at Frank. “Do you think it’s a hoax?”

Frank read the brief text and turned to look
at the hill of Wat Phnom in front of them.

“Only one way to find out.”

Frank turned to the men behind him, who sat
and stood, waiting for orders.

“Boys, there’s some shit going down.” He
pointed to Wat Phnom. “We need to take that hill.”

“Yeehaw!” Ed yelled, waving his cane as he
slid on his butt into the shallow water by the riverbank.

The men clambered together up the bank and
scuttled across the street toward the high green hill.

*******

Wat Phnom was packed with people who had
arrived early to the popular Wat for Pchum Ben Day: Men, women,
young, old, locals and tourists. Cambodian women, up since the
early morning cooking, bore their offerings, their trays of sweet
nourishing rice, toward the altar where the great Buddha sat in
serene silence.

The color orange was everywhere - every other
person in the room was a monk, dressed in a flowing saffron robe.
Most of them were busy eating coconut rice, hungry from sitting
inside during the months of rain, waiting to offer prayers, to
return to the streets to pray for their countrymen. Now they were
too intent on satisfying their hunger to notice the katoey scanning
the crowded room from the back.

A tiny old white man ran into the main Pagoda
doorway, his cane in his right hand. He stopped, staring at the
packed crowd. He’d been the first of the Veterans up the steps. He
was quick on his feet, always had been. He’d left those old coots
behind, anxious for action.

Standing in the doorway, Ed watched a
beautiful Cambodian woman, pace behind the crowd, her eyes scanning
the innocents as she tried to find a break in the dense mass of
people. Her long black hair, white tips at the end, was a stark
contrast against her short red dress. She glanced down at the small
man who now appeared at her side.

She was a foot taller than he and far broader
of shoulder. Noticing her attention, Ed winked, raising his
eyebrows twice, ever the rogue, even in battle.

She stepped close to him and leaned down to
Ed to whisper in his ear. He leaned forward to hear.

As he listened, Ed’s expression changed, his
face hardening in anticipation. The woman leaned away from him, her
eyes wide, her face a question.

“We have no time,” she said. “I can’t get
through that crowd.”

Ed dropped his cane and saluted the woman. He
stepped forward and crouched onto his knees, proceeded in a fast
crawl forward, sneaking in between the empty spaces. As he moved
forward, Ed stared up, looking and looking, as Socheat had asked
him to. There was so much orange and so few seconds separating the
present from the future destruction.

Ed spotted the monk with the black sash, near
the front, by the Buddha, his silver donation bucket wrapped
tightly to his slim frame. As an incense stick burned to its sweet
end in front of the golden Buddha, the monk turned to face the
crowd. Ed rose to his full height, pushing his shoulders past
pointy elbows. A boy of ten stood nearby watching him. He waved at
the funny man who had crawled on the Pagoda floor on Pchum Ben Day.
The boy wondered if the man perhaps was a ghost, paying penance on
his knees, seeking rice to eat. Ed waved back and winked, then
reached up for the silver bucket, and grabbing its lip, yanked the
monk to the ground, sandwiching the metal between them.

“Not on my watch,” he said.

*****

In the provinces, it was the tuk-tuk drivers
who acted most quickly in response to the Prime Minister’s message.
In their ubiquity, the drivers were a lightning chain reaction,
racing towards the Wats, honking their horns and yelling at people
on the streets, warning them to turn around and go home. In a
country with no public transport system, these men were the
circulation system of the nation, ferrying their countrymen and
visitors to and fro, getting everyone where they needed to go,
safely, and, when traffic permitted, on time. Today, however, they
did not transport anyone but themselves and their selfless hearts,
ignoring traffic rules, streetlights and other hindrances to speed.
They reached Wats in the farthest corners of a country and they
surrounded the threat.

In one large and crowded Pagoda in a province
far from Phnom Penh, several drivers overcame the monk with the
silver urn secured by a black sash. A tuk-tuk driver named Kiem had
led that charge, racing toward the Wat on his shiny red motorcycle.
He had not found Severine but instead he had found his purpose. He
smiled as he tackled the monk, content with his contribution and
with whatever would come next. Perhaps he would visit the Pagoda
again one day as a ghost. He hoped there were motorcycles in the
beyond.

*******

Somewhere in a remote corner of the eastern
jungle, a massive explosion had occurred deep underground. It was
not noted by anyone and it would be some time before the thick vein
of gold there was discovered. When at last it was found by an
Australian prospector, large chunks of the metal were noted already
carved from the massive gold vein, strewn about a vast plane next
to a previously unmapped underground river. The misshapen lumps
were thought to be the result of an earthquake and so were simply
added to the newly mined materials. A few of the miners thought it
odd that there were so many large chunks of gold lying about but
beyond that what could be done. There was no one in town who knew
anything about it. Of course, there were a few rumors of
antiquities, but there were always rumors in town whenever people
talked of the jungle. If there had been antiquities, they were long
gone or destroyed.

Chapter 41

Police tape extended in front of Angkor Wat,
across the green lawn, past the broad moat and the long sidewalk,
blocking the entrance to the temple from the street. Curious
tourists wandered by, too late for the show. Chided by policemen,
they scurried on to temples farther afield, Ta Prahm and the Bayon,
still intact.

Flint stepped over the tape and walked among
the rubble of Angkor Wat’s central dome. She’d flown up from Phnom
Penh a few hours after the dawn attacks.

The police detective saw her and nodded. She
was not supposed to be there and they both knew it. But she was
getting a pass today. Her agent had personally saved hundreds of
lives there earlier that morning. His efforts had saved
thousands.

Flint knelt down and picked up a broken
rectangular stone, its flat surface smooth. A second similar stone
lay nearby. She placed the two pieces together, edges aligned. She
held them for a moment, looking at the whole, before letting them
fall from her hands to the soft earth.

She shook her head. There will always be men
bent on breaking things, she thought.

She studied the broken temple. The
destruction of that single spire was complete. But the other spires
rose up behind it.

Nearby, a massive stone Buddha lay on its
side, a hairline crack running diagonally from left to right across
its face, under its eye, over the bridge of its nose and through
its eternal smile.

*******

In total, nearly half of the Wats in the
country were attacked and decimated that Pchum Ben Day morning.
Hakk’s message of fear had reached far, enticing both those
clinging to a dark-hearted past and others simply bent on
destruction, hating for the sweet pleasure that hate brought to
simple people.

But thankfully, the text message had gotten
through as hoped. Andrew had told the Prime Minister he needed only
one thing from him. Had made him promise. He’d explained that on
Pchum Ben Day, he might need to reach every man, woman and child in
the country. It had seemed a ridiculous thing to ask, far-reaching
and nonsensical, and the Prime Minister had told him so, more than
once, as the two men had argued about possibilities and potential.
But Andrew had asked for it nonetheless, demanded it, as he had
anticipated the worst. And in the end, to his credit, the Prime
Minister had promised and acted swiftly when he had received
Andrew’s frantic call at sunrise.

The brief text had saved countless lives -
catching people en route to their local Pagodas, bearing gifts to
honor the dead and nourish the ghosts of their ancestors. The
people had paused in their journey and read the text, urged to do
so by others around them on the streets and sidewalks, their own
phones in hand.

They’d read the words once, then twice,
surprised at the odd message and its sender, but grateful, deeply
so, once the reports of the attacks began to come in and the toll
of the dead were released.

The people had turned around and gone home,
setting the trays of rice aside. There, they had celebrated Pchum
Ben Day, thinking of times past and a future that would bring the
unknown, as the future always did. They decided that it did not
matter so much where they were on this day, but rather, that they
were together, thinking of those they had loved. They lit incense
and gave thanks, saying prayers for those they had lost, wishing
them peace and succor, and that they would find their way home.

Epilogue

Severine swept the wide courtyard while the
children sang. Nearby, on a mahogany bench, Frank sat playing the
guitar, teaching Samnang how to strum. In the back kitchen, Bob
cooked dinner, while several other Veterans tended to the large
garden they had built in a sunlit corner.

Severine smiled to herself. She had known as
a girl that she would one day run a home for orphans. She knew that
was her calling: Those without family moved her, struck in her the
chord of greatest giving. But she had not known until recently that
this calling included providing shelter, hearth, and home to
orphans of all ages, from all times. She was so pleased to learn
this. It mended her heart.

*******

In a pristine hospital in DC, Flint entered a
bright white room occupied by a heavily bandaged man, lying on a
single bed, his head turned toward the window. At the sound of the
door, the man turned his head. He tried to smile at Flint, but the
bandages didn’t budge.

Flint was glad to see him open his eyes and
move his head. He’d been in a coma for two weeks after the attack.
Then two additional weeks from doctor’s orders. He had lost his
spleen and damaged his liver, the impact only partly blunted by the
PPE he had worn, borrowed from Ben before his flight that morning
in anticipation.

He had lost a lot of blood. After the bomb
went off, he’d nearly bled out from a cut to his femoral artery, as
people, terrified, ran away from, not toward, him.

The required surgeries had been intense. And
there would be many more. Especially to his face, which was nearly
wiped clean of skin from the blast.

“Walk me through it again,” he croaked.

She smiled and took his hand and told her
favorite agent a story. She had told Andrew the same story twice a
day for the past week, after he had regained consciousness and was
able to hear her. She told him what they’d learned in the weeks
following the attack.

Hakk had tried to start an isolationist
revolutionary movement for years, drumming up hatred against
foreigners, as part of his mission to be true to Pol Pot. But he
needed money to go big, to recruit enough to make an impact.

So he had joined the gold rush, along with so
many others, seeing the metal as a way to make easy money to fuel
his cause. He applied for land concessions to mine for gold.

The first time he had applied, he was denied
and the concession went to a foreign company. So he applied again,
this time for a different plot of land, in Mondulkiri. Same again.
Ten times he applied. Ten times he was denied. Every time the
concession went to a foreign company.

Then two things happened, in rapid
succession. Hakk had owned two artisanal gem mines in Mondulkiri,
very small mines yielding only a few gems, but enough to satisfy.
These were co-opted, the land given to a foreign company for timber
harvesting. And then Hakk discovered the Veterans nearby in the
jungle. He didn’t know what they were doing there. All he knew was
that it infuriated him further, as he watched his land taken away
from him and the country spread its doors wide open to foreign
money and influence.

Hakk blamed all this on the Ch’kai, the
foreign dogs. So he unleashed his anger in his horrible plan to
return to the time of Year Zero.

Flint watched Andrew, his chest rising and
falling as he lay on the bed, the pale skin of his wrists nearly as
white as the hospital sheets. She would tell him later, about what
else they had found, shortly after the Wat explosions, the
mechanisms that Hakk had set in motion, the army of men waiting to
seize control in the chaotic aftermath of Pchum Ben Day. It had
been stopped in time. That was all Andrew needed to know for now.
She'd tell him the rest when he was stronger.