prisoner hauls himself up to the top of the gate and swings one leg over it.
Now he’s got a chance. All he needs to do is jump.
The burst of rifle fire sends everyone sprawling. Everyone except the fugitive. He remains where he is, straddling the gate as though nailed to it. Then, slowly bending from the waist, he falls forward onto the top rail. His hands clutch the metal, and then the strength seems to drain from his arms. They dangle in the wind. But he’s not dead. Not yet. His body jerks; he tries to move, barely raises his chest off the gate, leans to one side. He holds that position for a few seconds before plummeting back into the prisoners’ courtyard.
The guard with the Kalashnikov walks over to him and turns him over with his foot. He points his rifle at the fallen man’s head and fires a single shot, blowing out his brains.
—
Thomas has been vomiting for a long time. Kasper watches him and at the same time observes the other prisoners as they writhe in their beds.
The escape attempt seems to have driven the guards mad. They ordered everyone back inside. They kicked and punched the Cambodians, singling out the political prisoners for blows with sticks and rifle butts. They restored order.
Kasper and the American have been spared. The officer who inspects the prisoners goes over to Thomas and says, “They come for fetch you. You free to go.”
Then he goes over to Kasper and reveals his future: “Prey Sar.”
10
The Prophecy
On the Way to Prey Sar, near Phnom Penh, CambodiaSeptember 2008
The Toyota SUV taking him away from Preah Monivong Hospital has left the last suburbs of Phnom Penh behind. Now the big 4X4 is driving through a rural landscape composed of rice paddies and a few green areas not yet destroyed by uncontrolled deforestation. They pass somnolent villages united by the torpor of poverty, and then more paddy fields.
Kasper’s chained hand and foot. The smells of earth and suffocating heat mingle with the reek of sweat. The three soldiers escorting him will unload their prisoner at Prey Sar and drive away.
Prey Sar is the place of no return. It’s the place that’s spoken of as little as possible, and always very softly. Even the Westerners who live in Cambodia have learned that.
Prey Sar is hell. Kasper knows what’s waiting for him there.
He’s done a lot to deserve it.
He’s committed at least three mortal sins.
First sin: he trusted the wrong people. Second sin: he underestimated the risk. But the most grievous of his sins, the one that’s worse than everything else, is that he overestimated himself.
Not for the first time.
Now he realizes there’s something more serious than irresponsibility and cockiness behind his tendency to tempt fate. Something seriously pathological. Crazy, like he said. Also kind of stupid, the way he persists in behavior that endangers his health. Such as landing airplanes in extremely adverse conditions. Such as opening his parachute only four hundred meters from the ground. Such as handling explosives.
He’s spent thirty years like that, in a constant bath of foaming adrenaline.
These months in prison have given him time to think about his capture. Again and again he’s asked himself: if he and Clancy hadn’t been alone, if Patty had still been in Phnom Penh, what would have happened to her?
The answer is obvious.
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