The Khufu Equation (10 page)

Ven focused in on the man, whose face was now clearly visible. He had a white beard, a straight but meaty nose and a perfectly arched upper lip. The brow was heavy in a masculine way, but not too. He was broad-shouldered. The captain fixed the camera on the man's eyes, drawing increasingly closer. "Damn it, hold still!" he whispered anxiously. At last, he got the view he wanted and was able to see what he was looking for. The captain held his breath in suspense. It was what he had feared. The past had finally returned, and the past had looked at him through the lens of that camera. In the close-up view, Ven noticed three dots of grayish-black color amid the blue of the right pupil. The captain was dumbstruck by the discovery. He shook his head.

The man in the camera turned and left the customs area. "I've lost him," Ven complained to himself. "He has gone away."

He switched to the camera at the exit from the terminal building, where he was just able to catch sight of the bearded man. He was getting into a taxi. Now at least, it didn't matter that he was leaving the airport. Ven knew how--and where--to find him. Moments later, he reached for the telephone.

"Chen?"

"Yes, Father."

"Come. We need to talk. Possibly tomorrow, we will lose everything we have."

The international airport of Phnom Penh was located five kilometers from Phnom Penh. The highway to it, named after the Soviet Union, was built on an earthen dam, like any Cambodian highway. On both sides of the road spread a mirror of water, reflecting the billowy clouds, shining sun and date palms. But Kreis, riding in a taxi to meet his destiny, could see only his recollections. There was blood. There was love. There was defeat.

17 April, 1975

Victory. . .

When stones become dust and the rivers, having changed the direction, go back, this is the day people will remember forever. In the coming age of space colonization, when humankind begins to cultivate the ground of beloved planets, historians will tell about the time when the crazy idea of building communism was embodied in reality. Maybe it will be offered to countrymen by some fanatic in the form of a terrible, terrible fairy tale. Thus he will begin:

The truly bloody day for Cambodia was marked by the victory of patriotic forces over the Americano-Saigon aggressors and the reactionary pro-American regime, headed by Lon Nol. Freedom? No, is wasn't . . . .

Treachery

As the result of a five-year war for liberation, Cambodia--once a flourishing country--was left half-destroyed. Four-fifths of its enterprises were decimated, two-thirds of the rubber-bearing plantations were crushed, and three-fourths of the highways and railways were unusable. The ports suffered, too. The country, weakened by violence and struggle, had no time to stand up. On the same day--the 17th of April, 1975--the new aggressor was an Americo-Saigon one. His name was Pol Pot. He usurped the power and surrounded himself with a brutish military clique.

Two hours after the war representatives of Lon Nolo's party declared capitulation, Pol Pot's clique, using violence and fraudulent means, forced the population of Phnom Penh--two-and-a-half million people--to leave the city. Amid the heat, which sweltered at forty degrees Centigrade, the people, without food or water, were driven like cattle into agricultural districts. Thousands of them were shot, died from exhaustion or sunstroke, disease and epidemic diseases. Three hundred thousand houses in Phnom Penh were left empty, as if in the aftermath of a neutron bomb that left structures standing but erased every single life form in its path. Other towns and settlements met the same fate. The entire eviction took seventy-two hours.

Some years before the bloody day Pol Pot gathered his clique, consisting of peasants mostly illiterate and dissatisfied with the fact: city sat on village's neck. Having seized full power, Pol Pot used this psychological venom. While in the jungles he surrounded himself with teenagers. He forced boys to kill their fathers and mothers, and he made them eat the livers of their freshly killed enemies. After that, the young "red Khmer" were ready for any brutality that may be required.

Pol Pot wanted to rebuild society into a model of Mao Tse-Tung's "Cultural Revolution," where people were forced into a vast communal labor effort, had no property and were said to be "cleansed" through the rigors of physical labor. In one moment, cut off from the world, the country became a gigantic concentration camp. First, the intelligentsia was annihilated, but among that group were people who could merely read. Any of the rest could be killed for the smallest offense: A seven-year-old boy took a hoe to the head because he, exhausted from hunger, dared to eat a frog without permission.

Children in the "communa" were separated from their parents, and wives were forced to be apart from their husbands. Private property was liquidated: Everything, right up to domestic utensils, was socialized, and one could only dream of having a personal spoon.

An organized military structure was introduced in March 1976. It consisted of battalions, companies, platoons and mobile detachments according to sex, age,
etc.
People were put to work fortifying dams, digging canals or even clearing impassable jungles. Due to the absence of tools, the ground was cultivated with bamboo sticks. Trees were uprooted manually. This work--the work one might otherwise associate with chain gangs--would continue for twelve to sixteen hours a day, or sometimes even longer.

Three years, eight months and twenty days became for Cambodia, figuratively speaking, the "zero year." On the 7th of January, 1979, the banner of liberation of the United Front for National Salvation of Kampuchea (Cambodia) was hoisted aloft over Phnom Penh. During the reign of Pol Pot, hundreds of thousands were killed, and millions more were deprived of their human rights. The infrastructure of postal and telegraphic communications was destroyed, families were torn apart, and tradition was subjected to the cruelty of ridicule.

It was immediately necessary to expedite the conduct of social and economic tasks: to provide housing, to connect families, to save people from hunger, to organize peaceful labor and normal life, to resurrect the economy and to defend the country's territorial integrity and safety.

Kreis

Could he have known, as a thirty-year-old man, that the events he witnessed in Cambodia would turn his entire life head over heels? Perhaps he couldn't, but life is unpredictable and one can lose everything very suddenly. So, it happened to Kreis. He lost his job, his native country, even his face . . . his real face.

OCTOBER 7, 1979.

The YAK-40 landed on the strip at Phnom Penh through visual means, as Pol Pot had destroyed the airport's entire system. There was no radio communication, nor was there a controller on site. It was somewhat dangerous at the landing speed of two hundred kilometers per hour, but there was no choice. Specialists from socialist states flew into Cambodia. They had to teach cadre and help rejuvenate the country.

The majority of those specialists were from the Soviet Union. They worked selflessly and free of charge. A certain Lezhnev Maksim Nikolaevich was selfless in his thoughts, at least initially. Time, however, possesses a magical ability to transform the essence of things. Lezhnev Maksim: a citizen of the Soviet Union, thirty years old; family status, single; a polyglot, well acquainted with English, German, French, Hungarian and Chinese; an interpreter. In this capacity, it was reasonable that he would work in Cambodia. Thus he placed himself at the service of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, but his assistance was required practically everywhere, even in welding work.

Maksim soon acquired a wide network of connections. He was able to get everything a man could want, and he could do things he hadn't even considered previously. Corruption and bribery were flourishing in the country, and Maksim was not immune. As payment for various services, he accepted gold and precious stones. Anyone knows--and he should have known--that such services have a smell so rotten as to choke a man at the throat.

Uch Tana.

The girl was just thirteen in 1975, and to the partisan attachment she was known as Lotus Flower. What was to be her fate? It didn't differ much from that of her countrymen, so many of whom had suffered under Pol Pot's regime. Within this slender girl, however, was something special, even mystical. She had been a student of ballet up till the rise of the regime. She had a big family: father, mother, four brothers and two sisters. From the 17th of April that year, she would no longer see her relatives. It was the day that military personnel rushed into the ballet school. They were caps and light-checked scarves. With shouts "Command to leave Phnom Penh, American bombers will be in an hour," the people in caps led the pupils and teachers out of building and integrated them with the columns of citizens, whereupon they marched down the central avenue under the guidance of rifles. No personal possessions were allowed on the march. Those who were not pleased with this development were shot on the spot. The was terror in their faces. There were shouts, tears, panic and blood . . . so much blood. Once outside the city, they were ordered to remove their shoes. The columns got thinner and thinner, and amid the shadows of sunset one could see many bodies decomposing along the roads. Then, as morning approached, the columns arrived at a small village in Svairieng Province. The people were locked into putrid barracks. The next day, three mongrels in checked scarves raped Tana. The same night she ran away, having dug a channel into the ground under the barrack wall.

Partisans found her barely alive in the jungle a day and a night after that. She survived, though, and remained in the detachment till victory. She could shoot, and she participated in blasting operations. Age was not a hindrance, since anyone who managed to stay alive was eager to avenge the many relatives who did not. Tana was admired for her courage, but she was particularly loved for her dance of unearthly Apsars. Comrades called her Lotus Flower, which is said to pour out healing balm on people's souls. This girl seemed to shine from within. She brought hope and serenity to everyone, but the hurt, which went down to her soul, could be cured by only one man: Maksim Lezhnev.

APRIL 13, 1981.

Meeting

Maksim first saw her during the New Year's holiday, on the green glade where, in front of the bombed-out pagoda, people had gathered. It was a warm night. The stars above twinkled giddily, and bonfires crackled. Soldiers with guns sat in their American jeeps not far away. The war had officially ended two years earlier, and people had returned to their hometowns. Unofficially, however, it was not over. Pol Pot's supporters, hidden deep within the jungle recesses, could attack at any moment.

A circle of people sat enthralled, surrounding a pretty young maiden. She was dancing. Maksim was seated with his friend Ven Jun in the center, having a smoke. His heart ached with emotions: he had never seen the magical dance known as Apsar, which came from the ancient age of Angkor Wat. The glamour of dance consisted of the fact that every movement of a hand, every glance and even the movement of the eyelashes required absolute synchronization in order to convey the definitive character of each gesture. What was Maksim feeling as this Eastern girl in a blue sarong, dancing against a background of flying sparks, poured out healing balm onto their hurt souls? He was filled with nostalgia. Before then, the images he saw were blue-eyed rivers, bashful birches, native faces, Moscow streets and snow. There, in Cambodia, snow was the stuff of stories and faraway places.

"Hey, wake up! Have come! A young Khmer taxi driver pushed Kreis' shoulder and smiled. "Here is your Independence Square."

Kreis rubbed the eyes, saw the smiling face and then the square in the center of which stood a monument. It was a small tower, like the bud of a lotus.

"Yes, come!" He paid and was ready to say goodbye, but suddenly he changed his mind.

"Look here, young-and-handsome, there's a suggestion in a hundred dollars."

"How much? The smile became broader. "What must I do?"

"I'll stay here, near the monument, and you drive. Ask the boys whether Uch Tana still lives in house 37. To my opinion, she is a teacher of folk dances. If you know her family status, you'll will get fifty more." There was no need to ask the driver. He was back in twenty minutes.

"What's the news?" asked Kreis, breathless with anticipation.

"Yes, she lives . . . ." The driver's expectation was bigger. Kreis paid a hundred.

"What else?"

"Was married. Husband was killed in battle under Battambang, five years ago. No children.

An additional sum of fifty dollars was paid, and soon the taxi stopped at house 37. Kreis, the Casanova, got out and waved farewell to the driver, who disappeared with little more than a gleaming-white smile. The house of Uch Tana was situated in a small block, and like others it sat on piles, absolutely drowning in greenery. It was a two-story with a wide verandah and a garden in front. Kreis opened the gate and, passing young cocoa palms, found himself near the staircase, which was decorated with flowers of red and white magnolia. The man took a flower, approached the door and knocked.

Light steps were heard behind the door. Kreis became excited, either from the heaviness of guilt or from the anticipation of meeting. He didn't know it at that moment.