The Brittle Limit, a Novel (8 page)

“I’m trying to find out who Ben was working
for and what exactly he was doing out there in the field.”

The man puffed on his cigar. He did his best
thinking while smoking.

“Listen here,” he said, chewing on the
cigar’s end. “I was heading out for a drink. You seem like a decent
guy. Let’s talk over a whiskey. You’re buying.” He stood and stuck
out his hand. “I’m Tom. Tom O’Connell.”

Andrew smiled and shook the man’s beefy hand.
“Lead the way.” He’d bought many an adult beverage for a
source.

The bar called Abbey’s was conveniently
located only two buildings down from KMM’s office, a single-story
storefront, a neon sign in the window. It was a grungy but popular
dive that had seen better days but not happier ones. The front bar
was busy on the early Monday evening, filled with fresh faces,
ready to start the weeknight with a serious buzz. Andrew saw the
booze on display was all top shelf, including his favorite Waypoint
whisky.

Tom led the way past the busy front bar down
the carpeted hall into a dim and smoky back room filled with
antique-looking furniture, all replicas, and large Plaster-of-Paris
lion statues guarding each corner.

“This is ‘The Club’ back here. Men only. The
front room is for the kids, the NGO workers, volunteers. Too much
energy.”

The Khmer bartender had seen him approaching
and poured two generous fingers of whiskey into a crystal
tumbler.

“Make it two, Geoff. Courtesy of my friend
here.”

Andrew nodded and pulled out a fifty, laid it
on the bar, enough for couple fine whiskeys. The bartender poured
another.

Tom took one and handed Andrew a glass. “We
are not entirely uncivilized here.” They clinked glasses and Tom
took a deep swig.

“So.” Andrew needed to keep this guy
focused.

“Yeah. Ben did some work for me. Not a lot,
since usually we go with more established players for the
prospecting work. But he seemed like a bright lad, a go-getter.
Every now and then I’d throw him a bone you know, stuff no one else
wanted to do. As I said, hard to find good talent, people willing
to take risks. I offered him a gig prospecting a bit of tricky
terrain, hoped maybe he could streamline things for us.”

“How?” Andrew asked.

“The first phase of mining– ‘Exploration’,
you with me? - is fucking expensive, cause you’re digging around in
the dirt blind and mostly come up empty. Over and over. Ben was
cheap, had his own metal detectors. Figured, if he could pinpoint a
promising source, then I’d send in the big guns.”

“A source?”

Tom winced, as if in pain. “You don’t know
shit about mining, do you?”

“Honestly, no.”

“Sources is what investors want to see, new
sources of metal, preferably a thick, rich, easy-to-access vein.
Investors, they’re kinda like heroin addicts that way.” Tom
chortled at his joke.

“Investors?” Andrew asked. “I thought this
was a private venture.”

“Sure it is.” Tom patted his hefty stomach.
“But not my money. No, I got a couple pain-in-the-ass American
investors who expect to see a big return. Couple of tech
billionaires, think since they cracked open the Internet, they
understand rocks too. Why don’t people just stick with what they
know?”

Sensed an oncoming diatribe, Andrew
interrupted. “So you sent Ben out prospecting? When was this?”

Tom took a deep swallow of his whiskey,
thinking. “First time, about six months back, then again two months
ago, then most recently, last month.”

“All three times to Mondulkiri?”

Tom looked up from relighting his cigar,
which had gone out again. He raised his eyebrows and puffed as he
shook his head. “I didn’t send him to Mondulkiri. I sent him to
Ratanakiri, to the north. Sorry, mate but if he was in Mondulkiri,
he was on someone else’s dime.” He finished his whisky. Two fingers
went up and the bartender reloaded his glass.

Chapter 9

Late afternoon light flooded the orphanage
kitchen. It was a large square room, windows on three sides.
Cheerful yellow tiles covered the floor. An ancient-looking stove
sat in the back corner, well-worn cookware hung from the high
ceiling.

As she dried dishes alongside her Cambodian
staff, Severine glanced at the guitar that sat unused, propped
against the wall. Finished, she wished the children good night and
gave last instructions to Kolab. Her assistant would manage the
orphanage for the next two days, while Severine took time to sort
through Ben’s things. And to think.

She spoke briefly to the night guard, who
locked the door behind her and settled into his chair for an early
evening snooze.

Outside the gate, Severine placed a massive
well-padded helmet over her unruly black hair, started up her
motorcycle and sped down the quiet dirt road toward her apartment
on the far side of town, near the lake.

A block away, a yellow tuk-tuk sat parked by
a flimsy metal shack, its plastic flaps closed against potential
rain. The playing children had long ago disappeared. The tuk-tuk
driver sat in the back cab, feigning sleep.  Through
serpentine eyes, he watched Severine say her goodnights.

“Meddling French bitch,” he muttered under
his breath, watching Severine drive away. He dialed his phone,
spoke briefly and hung up. He settled in for the night. He would
await further instructions.

No one paid attention to the sleeping tuk-tuk
driver. No one considered what trouble he might cause. Quite a bit,
as it would happen.

*******

Severine zipped through the busy streets to
her apartment, passing monks clad in long flowing saffron robes and
families of four perched all on a single moto. She honked at a
friend riding a bicycle and waved at her hairdresser walking her
dog down the dirty sidewalk, taking careful steps among broken beer
bottles.

Ahead, at a four-way traffic light that only
half of the vehicles obeyed, several Cambodian children stood
together on the corner. As Severine pulled up, the kids approached
her and held out thick white bracelets made of white jasmine flower
buds, tied with red string.

“Flowers, lady? Flowers?”

Severine hated seeing kids on the street but
they were all over this town. She didn’t like to encourage them to
beg. But tonight, she reached into her pocket for riel, and handed
the handful of bills to the smallest, dirtiest little boy she’d
ever seen, who smiled at her, his brown eyes wide, as he placed a
white Jasmine bracelet on her slim wrist, said “Ah Kuhn,” and then
ran off with his remaining wares.

The light changed to green and Severine
started up again, an impatient black SUV honking behind her.

As she wove in and out of the traffic,
Severine held the bracelet to her nose and inhaled. She knew the
kids should be in school. Kids made a good living on the street,
easy money from tourists.

But today, she’d needed flowers.

She recalled Andrew’s question from the
morning. How did you two meet?

So perfectly, she thought, looking at the
flowers.

She turned off the main road and navigated
several smaller, pot-holed side streets, lined with modest
single-story family shops. On every corner, tuk-tuk and moto-dop
drivers congregated, talking, eating, and waiting for a fare.
Grungy western backpackers walked down the street, their unwashed
dreadlocks like matted cats. They peered at Severine as she sped
by.

As Severine drove over a short bridge, she
held her breath. The open canal below her was about five feet wide,
its murky water dotted with floating water bottles, soda cans, and
other unmentionable debris. It snaked its way through the city,
behind homes, businesses, pagodas and museums, open to refuse from
all.

A half-mile farther, she turned right and
drove twenty feet down a quiet lane, where she pulled up next to a
three-story pink house with a wide concrete courtyard, behind a
high iron gate.

She let herself in, her key hanging from a
white shoelace around her neck. She hadn’t been back home since the
trip to Mondulkiri. Her heart beat hard as she walked up the steps.
Pots and pans crashed in a neighbor’s kitchen nearby. Somewhere,
someone practiced a Jack Johnson song on an out-of-tune guitar.

As soon as she reached the front door,
Severine knew something was wrong. The deadbolt was not on, which
she knew she’d locked. The pink curtain that covered the glass had
been pushed back a couple inches, as if someone had been peering
out. Watching.

“Hello?” she called out, stepping in to the
hallway. She heard some footsteps in the back of the house near the
kitchen and saw a figure jump out an open window onto the bamboo
scaffolding outside.

“Damn it,” she said. She’d known the workers
were coming to do work on the roof and she’d forgotten to close all
the windows before they started. She figured the intruder was a
mischievous kid. The local children were fascinated by her
collection of glass frogs on display in a bookshelf in the front
hall. She’d been collecting them since she was little, her father
presenting one to her after each of his trips abroad. Other than
the clothes on her back, the collection was the only thing she’d
brought with her from France.

She flicked on the hallway light and
gasped.

The hallway floor was covered with broken
glass. Her collection had been knocked to the ground, the figures
smashed, the pieces kicked up and down the wood floors. She walked
quickly past the mess into the living room.

There she saw papers strewn across the floor,
boxes overturned, the desk drawers pulled out. The sofa cushions
had been sliced open and the stuffing pulled out. A large ceramic
Buddha had been lifted up and smashed on the wood floor. It lay
shattered in pieces by the window. She stepped toward the window
and picked up a fragment. It had been a gift from her husband.

Severine couldn’t process this alone. She
pulled out her phone and rooted in her purse for the slip of paper
Andrew had given her.

He answered on the first ring.

“So, now I need your help.” She described the
scene in her hallway and living room.

Andrew asked, “Where do you live?”

She gave him the address, then sat on the
torn sofa, staring at the broken pieces.

*******

By the time Andrew arrived, the moon had
risen halfway into the clear sky. Severine sat on the top step of
the outside stairs, watching him, smoking a thin cigarette and
listening to the buzzing insects droning overhead, playing Russian
roulette in the bright porch light.

With a nod from Severine, the night guard -
standard in most residences -opened the heavy gate, pushing its
weight with a practiced hand. Andrew rushed in, climbing the stairs
two steps at a time. As he approached, Severine stubbed out her
cigarette on the concrete, stood and turned, wordlessly opening the
front screen door for Andrew to go in. She followed him.

The lights were all on in the house. Andrew
surveyed the mess in the hallway. “Shit.” He turned to her,
studying Severine’s face to get a sense of how she was handling
this. So far so good.

“Do you know what they were looking for?”

“Yes, in fact I do.” She picked up a large
glass fragment of her favorite green frog, its golden eye staring
at her. “Follow me.”

She led Andrew into the main room. French
doors opened out into the night, street sounds filtering up into
the bright room. A lone moth darted in, seeking the source of the
light.

Andrew looked around. There were papers all
over the floor, the desk, and the couch. Overturned cardboard boxes
lay ripped and strewn across the floor, the contents dumped without
care. They’d left nothing untouched. A night wind from the open
window fluttered the papers.

“What is all this?”

“Ben’s records. He kept meticulous notes of
his work.” She neatened a stack of papers on the couch, cornering
the edges. “Among all this, they knew exactly what they were
looking for. And they found it.”

“How do you mean?”

Severine picked up a black metal box, its
flimsy metal lock bent and misshapen. She opened the box and turned
it upside down. It was empty.

“This contained his reports to the Ministry,
where he’d been, what he’d done, seen…found. He put all that into
his reports and kept a copy for himself.”

“What reports? What Ministry?” Andrew felt
heady, with the slight buzz that he got when things were about to
light up.

Severine scratched her chin as she bit her
lower lip. She was tired. She hadn’t slept now for three
nights.

“Ben filed reports with the Ministry of
Mining. He reported on things he found out in the jungle.
Artifacts, remnants, old stone carvings. Nothing too big, usually
just fragments. He’d find shards of pottery, old tools, parts of
statues. Nobody has explored the deep woods out there because of
all the leftover land mines. There’s still a lot of stuff out
there, just waiting to be found. The Ministry rule is if it is
historical, the Ministry wants to know. It’s how they decide
whether to grant concessions to mining companies or to mark the
land for preservation.”

Severine’s long hair framed her face. “And
that’s what they took. All of his Ministry reports.” She surveyed
the mess on the floor. “They made quite a mess finding them. But
they knew the reports were here.”

Andrew stared at the empty box. “The report
would say what he found and who he was working for?”

“Yes, that would all have been in the
report.”

Andrew stared out the window, thinking, and
turned back to Severine. “But Ben couldn’t have filed a report for
this trip. He…never made it back.”

Severine nodded, accepting the harsh truth.
“Yes, you’re right. But he had filed a report from his first trip
out there. He said he needed to go back again to this one site,
wanted me to go along.”