Thomas stammers. “I’ve heard about them, but Jesus . . . It’s madness, there are tigers up there, and bears . . . and . . . and the locals are genuine savages.”
“Brady will bring me the right shoes.”
“Shoes . . . Ah, right, in that case there’s nothing to worry about.”
“Well, as for that, the area’s also full of antipersonnel mines,” says Kasper, smiling. “But if you asked me what I’d give to be there right now, I’d tell you: anything at all.”
“Anything at all,” Thomas repeats.
“Because the big problem is getting there. It won’t be simple.”
Kasper gestures toward the guards. At the moment there are five of them, distracted by their own noisy chatter. The gate’s about twenty meters from them, and climbing it will not be a piece of cake. Not so long ago, he could have done it easily—it’s only about two and a half meters high—but now he feels like an old man, plus he’s got mashed hands and feet. Two and a half meters look like two hundred.
But he has to make it.
All he needs is someone to distract the guards.
He looks at Thomas.
Thomas looks at him. “What do you want me to do?”
“You have to feel very sick.”
“When?”
“Tomorrow morning. If you’re still here.”
—
The next day Thomas Rolfe has a visitor, an official from the American embassy. The guards allow them to step out of the ward for a private talk.
Kasper watches them go and thinks about how, once again, he’s rolling the dice. Challenges are fraught with possibilities, he tells himself, with the fatalism of one who’s swaying on a cord suspended over the void.
First possibility: the embassy official’s here to spring Thomas. He comes back into the ward, bids Kasper farewell, and goes away forever. Or maybe he doesn’t even come back in. End of story.
Second possibility: Thomas spills the beans to the official and tells him what Kasper has planned for this very day. Well, if that’s the case, he’ll see the effects soon enough.
Third possibility: Thomas comes back in, helps him to dump his dose of Ritalin, helps him to escape, and then God will provide. For him and also for Thomas, he hopes.
Kasper assigns the probabilities.
First hypothesis: 45 percent.
Second hypothesis: another 45 percent.
Third hypothesis: 5 percent.
Other eventualities: the remaining 5 percent.
From which he deduces that, realistically speaking, all hope is lost.
Thomas returns and goes over to him. Kasper’s IV has been hooked up and the Ritalin drip has just begun. Kasper thinks that today a double dose might not be so bad, given how things are probably going to turn out. But the American screens him and helps him disconnect the tubing. Once again, the Ritalin will go to relaxing the rats.
“I asked permission to leave tomorrow afternoon instead of tomorrow morning.”
“What the hell are you talking about?” Kasper asks.
“I made up a story. I told the embassy guy I have to talk to the doctors and nurses tomorrow morning. I said that as an American citizen, I want to ask them to treat the people I’ve met in here better. More humanely. I made a long speech about American values. The guy from the embassy looked touched. He’s from Boston, seems like a nice kid.”
“You were supposed to get out tomorrow morning. . . .”
“A few hours later won’t make any difference.”
“The guy from the embassy must have thought you were crazy.”
“So did I,” says Rolfe with a smile.
—
Phnom Penh’s rumbling more loudly than usual. It’s out there, practically around the corner. One hundred meters away. Maybe less.
Kasper looks up at the sky and thinks this is a good day for escaping. Maybe also for dying. Be that as it may, he has no intention of dying in here.
He considers the guards on this hot morning. There are four of them at the moment, engaged in the usual distracted chattering while the zombie-prisoners are taking the air and smoking. Near the guards, a single Kalashnikov stands propped against the wall.
Thomas is worried. Very worried. But he’s just guaranteed Kasper that he won’t back out. “It shouldn’t be hard for me to act like I feel sick. I feel sick already. Seriously.”
Kasper looks at him. His greenish complexion confirms what he said. His liver’s working overtime. Luckily, there are still Americans like this, Kasper thinks. Americans like Thomas Rolfe and Brady Fielding. Men who help others. Who, when their country has committed an injustice, can admit it.
At his signal, Thomas will walk toward the guards and collapse to the ground in convulsions. That will be the moment.
The difficult part will be the jump. One single jump. Once he’s over the gate, he’ll simply have to make a dash for the street.
Simply.
The street’s where Brady, astride his Yamaha, will be waiting. They’ll take a carefully planned route, down side roads and over terrain inaccessible to automobiles, a route that will be difficult for their pursuers to follow.
“Are you ready?”
“I’m ready,” Thomas whispers.
“Okay, let’s get started. . . .”
“Listen, pilot,” says Thomas with a wink and a daredevil smile. “If something goes wrong, we’ll meet in the next life.”
“Everything’s going to be all right. All you have to do is feel sick.”
Thomas staggers off in the direction of the guards. Nobody notices him. In Preah Monivong, everyone staggers, more or less. It’s a scene that Kasper has imagined dozens of times. The American will crumple and fall, the guards will surround him, so will the other prisoners. No one will pay any attention to Kasper, and he’ll do what he has to do.
That’s exactly how the scene will play out.
But at that precise moment, Kasper sees him.
The man in the blue shirt.
Kasper recognizes him at once. He’s one of the political prisoners, one of the most respected. He can’t be forty yet, skinny as a rail, his face so hollow it looks like a skull, his expression that of a man possessed. He emerges from a small group of Cambodians that opens like the corolla of a flower
