Free Cambodia Noir by Nick Seeley Page B

into.”
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    Gus.
    No one knows why he’s still in Cambo. It’s not the sort of question you ask. I know that sometime during the Dirty War his family decided Argentina was too dangerous and sent him to school in the States. I don’t know who they thought was after him. Argentina got better, but Gus never went back.
    When he came out here he was working for the wires, but he got fed up and started his own paper—the Post and the Daily had just got going, and he hated them both . He’s kept the thing running for years on guts, coke, and an endless string of free interns.
    When I landed, we hit it right off. Same interests: drugs and kickboxing and military coups. He got me work, and the upstairs room in Mun’s house. We spent our mornings fighting, our nights chasing the dragon—but Gus always held back. He’s a different kind of addict: his fix is answers. He doesn’t want the headline, he wants the solution. That kind of desire takes you strange places. I think he stayed in Cambo because he couldn’t figure it out.
    It means he’s going to die here.
    I wonder if he’s figured that out yet.
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    Two cups of coffee, half a pack of cigarettes, and a candy bowl full of Sudafed and 800 mg Advil, and I’m ready. Gus’s girl is long gone, but we’re still talking in whispers. It’s hot, and even with the balcony doors open the room is an oven. Jammed with plants and stacks of books and boxing gear and caged lovebirds, it feels like the jungle. Pain creases my face when I wipe away the sweat.
    â€œThere are wheels within wheels here,” Gus says. “The obvious thing would be that Bunny, que en paz descanse, just pissed off the wrong guy. You heard what he’d been saying about Hun Sen’s so-called reconciliation plan.”
    â€œOnly heard.”
    â€œWell, it was bold. Not just the usual insults, y’know, calling him a one-eyed dog. Bunny used logic—took apart the speeches to show how Hun Sen was promising everything to everyone and could never live up to it all. It was dangerous stuff. Before you got back, Hun Sen warned Radio Ranariddh they should shut up. Bunny toned it down, but maybe it was too late.” He’s watching me like a kid who’s thrown a bag of M-80s into the campfire and is waiting to see if they’ll explode.
    â€œBut you don’t buy it.” I suck on another Advil. My teeth feel like glass.
    â€œWell, there are other angles, eh? Hun Sen hasn’t got the seats to form a government, right—not without either FUNCINPEC or Rainsy throwing in with him. Rainsy says fuck you, obviously, he lives off being opposition. But FUNCINPEC? They’re nothing without favors to trade. So they’re dropping hints like mad, saying they’ll give him his coalition, but they want stuff in exchange: dissidents let out of jail, better posts in the cabinet, assurances it won’t be ’98 all over again . . . The list just gets longer. What if Hun Sen got tired of it? He wants his job back, and he wants it now, so he starts sending a few royalists on Khmer Rouge holidays—just a little reminder where this thing could go if they keep pushing him.”
    â€œRoyalists, plural?”
    â€œA minor FUNCINPEC figure was shot and killed in Kampong Cham a couple days back. Someone took his head as a souvenir. Everyone thought this was a local grievance . . . but maybe not. Then, a week ago, in Siem Reap, an organizer was stabbed—”
    â€œI get the idea. All a bit public to just be bargaining with Ranariddh, though.” My head aches. “Is it just coincidence this happens today? With the army and the police about to kill each other?”
    He has to stop and chew on that one awhile. It’s not so far-fetched: bad stuff happens every day in Cambodia, so the odds go all to hell. When he looks up, I see the idea glowing in his eyes. He’s chasing his fix now, and