you injured?”
“I’ve got dengue fever and various infections.”
A male nurse approaches and attaches a drip to Kasper’s arm. He gives the Western intruder a filthy look and goes away. The clear liquid descends, drop by drop, into Kasper’s veins. He gets one bottle of the stuff per day, but instead of perking up, afterward he feels wearier than before.
“What are they giving you?”
“Vitamins. According to them.”
“But nobody’s doing anything for you in Italy? Politically, I mean. Your government, the Vatican, the Red Cross, somebody . . .”
Kasper barely shakes his head. The movement could mean: I don’t know. Or also: Nobody.
The Dutchman looks around and whispers, “Listen, my friend, what can I do for you?”
“Maybe you could get in touch with somebody and tell him where I am. Tell him you saw me.”
“Of course I’ll do that. Tell me who he is.”
“An American. His name is Brady Fielding. You’ll find him not far from here.”
Kasper gives him the address and other pertinent information. Brady owns a repair shop. He fixes motorcycles and scooters. Rents them out, too.
The Dutchman gives Kasper a strange look. “A mechanic . . .,” he mutters doubtfully. He looks as though he wants to object: wouldn’t someone from the embassy or someone with a humanitarian organization be a better choice? Just as he’s on the point of making this suggestion, Kasper repeats the address: “Krala Hom Kong, on Tonlé Sap. Brady Fielding.” Brady’s the only one he can trust in this situation.
“Okay, I’ll go and see your mechanic,” the Dutchman murmurs. A doctor gestures to him to leave the ward. “But you haven’t told me what the hell happened to you. Why did they detain you? How long ago?”
“It was the twenty-seventh of last March,” Kasper whispers. “That’s all I can tell you.”
“Damn! Four months ago? Four months in places like this?”
“Right.” Kasper smiles. “This one isn’t even the worst of them.”
“Do you think your American friend . . . do you think he’s being held in the same kind of conditions?”
“I don’t know,” says Kasper.
He doesn’t want to think about it. He doesn’t know what to think. He’s in a swamp. Allies, friends, enemies; nothing is clear.
Clancy the shrewd, Clancy the wise. Where is he now? Maybe he got himself out of trouble. Maybe he signed so they’d let him go home.
8
Brick Wall
Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Palazzo della Farnesina, RomeSeptember 2008
The young functionary looks tired; his face is drawn.
The office is immense, with two big windows open to let in the light of a sparkling September day in Rome. The sounds of the capital are carried on the northwest wind, with the eternal drone of traffic along the Tiber in the background.
Barbara Belli finishes her coffee and reflects upon the fact that she finds herself in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs for the third time in the past four months. No, it’s the fourth time. Maybe even the fifth. The futile pilgrimages of a lady lawyer to the Farnesina Palace.
Since the first meeting, everything—apart from the coffee, which has clearly improved—has gone downhill.
Things had started off so well: at the end of July, the minister himself had written her a letter in which he guaranteed that he’d look into the case. It was an official letter, a registered document with all sorts of reference numbers.
Barbara had thanked His Excellency; the letter was an important gesture on his part. Nevertheless, in a subsequent meeting she had felt duty bound to point out to His Excellency’s courteous staff that the letter unfortunately contained some rather significant inaccuracies.
To begin with, her client had not been arrested; he’d been kidnapped. Furthermore, her client wasn’t being held in a prison, but in hiding places in various tiny, scattered villages, a fact that seemed to demonstrate the serious irregularities of his detention. Insofar as no official document regarding his case had been issued by any local Cambodian authority whatsoever, her client could not be said to have a legal situation. And finally, it was a little difficult for her client to enter into contact with the local Italian diplomatic and consular authorities, as his days were rather full: he was spending them being tortured and undergoing decidedly harsh interrogations conducted by members of the Cambodian military; from time to time, interestingly enough, such sessions took place in the presence of individuals who were United States citizens.
“Pardon me, but how do you know all this?” the ministry functionary had asked her.
“I know it because his family is sending extortion money to a Cambodian officer. And thanks to those payments, every now and then my client manages to communicate with his loved ones.”
“Have you got proof?”
“I have records of the money transfers his family has made. I’ve given you copies of all that, you’ve got everything. . . .”
“That money could have gone to anyone.”
“Anyone . . .”
“Even to your client himself . . . you understand me.”
“Are you suggesting that my client has invented this whole story in order to extort money from his mother while he’s in Cambodia?”
“That’s not what I said,” the functionary had replied, backing down. “But my dear Ms. Belli, you must admit that the situation is clearly very complicated.”
Clearly.
And besides, as the same ministry official had explained to her with a self-satisfied smile, a letter personally signed by the minister for foreign affairs was not a thing to be sneezed at. As if to say: we’re not the United States, we may not even be France or Great Britain, but if our government takes a step, however small, then something must surely happen.
Since that meeting, another two months have passed. Two months of futile pilgrimages to the Farnesina.
Until this late September day.
“My client’s in a hospital,” Barbara Belli says, placing her espresso cup on the table in front of her. She takes a page of notes out of a folder. “He’s been in Preah Monivong Hospital in Phnom Penh for weeks and weeks.”
After gazing briefly at his assistant, who’s staring at his computer and raising an eyebrow, the ministry official—the same young functionary she has dealt with from the start—says to Barbara, “In a hospital? Is he wounded?”
“He’s very sick.”
“How
