The Brittle Limit, a Novel (6 page)

“I’m Andrew Shaw. I think Jeremy had
mentioned to you that I’d need to speak with you. I recognized you
from your photo.” He stuck out his large hand, which she took. They
stared at each other for a brief moment, their hands clasped.
Andrew noted her grip, strong, and her eyes, dark circles
underneath.

“Yes. He did.” She sighed. This wasn’t going
to get better anytime soon, she thought. “You have questions about
Ben.”

“Yes. I do. Is this a good time?” He pulled
out the chair opposite hers.

“It’s fine.” It didn’t seem like she had much
choice. She watched as Andrew took a seat, the chair’s legs
scraping loudly against the gray slate floor.

Seated, Andrew took a slow deep inhale, his
large hands resting on the glass tabletop. His brow furrowed. He’d
had little personal experience with real loss, was usually behind
the scenes, pretending to be something he wasn’t, which is where he
preferred it. Loss was raw and didn’t allow for dissembling.

“I am so sorry about Ben. Certainly a massive
shock for you.”

Though Severine wasn’t a crier, she had cried
last night, long jagged bouts. But she would not cry now. Her
emotions were tucked away, folded secret notes to be read alone in
the dark.

“Thank you,” she said.

The waiter refreshed Severine’s coffee and
asked Andrew if he wanted a cup. “Yes. Black.” He left to fetch
Andrew a cup.

“You must be reeling,” Andrew said.

“Yes.” Severine cleared her throat and sipped
her ice water. “When one’s husband gets blown up, it’s certainly a
surprise.” Her French accent, usually slight, slipped out,
‘surprise’ sounding like sur-preeze.

“You’re married?” Andrew asked, himself
surprised.

“Yes. I am married,” Severine replied.

“Sorry, Jeremy said…”

Severine interrupted. “Jeremy didn’t know.
Contrary to his belief, Jeremy does not know everything that goes
on in this town.”

Andrew raised his eyebrows at her vehement
reply. Clearly, a little tension there, he thought. A topic best
left alone. Interesting.

Severine placed her water glass hard on the
table and her hand hit the side of her full coffee cup, spilling
the dark liquid on the table. Andrew grabbed white cloth napkins
from an adjacent table and mopped up the mess while Severine
watched him. He piled the soiled napkins on the tabletop. The
waiter swooped in to clear them away.

“We’d like to understand exactly what
happened out there in Mondulkiri,” Andrew said.

Severine narrowed her eyes at Andrew. “When
you say ‘We’, who is this royal ‘We’?” she asked.

“Didn’t Jeremy explain?” Andrew replied.

Severine shook her head. “Like everyone I’ve
encountered so far in the past 24 hours, Jeremy was less than
helpful. Nothing knew. He said you would have questions and that I
was to answer them. Which I will try to do. But when you say ‘We’,
I’m first interested in knowing who is the ‘We’ so interested in
me.”

Andrew sat back in his chair. They seemed to
have broken the ice at least; she was pissed, which was better than
cold and unresponsive. “You called Ben’s dad, right? To let him
know…what happened?”

She nodded. “Yes. I left a panicked voicemail
with his secretary. He was in a meeting, she said. Even when I told
her it was an emergency, that his son had just been killed, she
wouldn’t put me through. Can you imagine? What meeting is so
important? I have not heard back from him. We’ve never met.”

Andrew listened to this with interest. He’d
met a few businessmen who would put a meeting first. “Well, your
message got through,” he said. “Ben’s father has asked for an
investigation into his son’s death. He has a lot of pull back in
the States.” Severine looked skeptical at this revelation. She’d
assumed Andrew was conducting a routine inquiry. Jeremy, as usual,
had not told her the full story.

Seeing her reaction, Andrew asked, “You
didn’t know?”

She shook her head, tossing her long hair on
her shoulders. “Ben didn’t get along with his dad. He didn’t talk
much about family. I understood they were farmers, or ranchers,
something on the land.”

Andrew, like most men, was not unaffected by
a woman with an accent. When Severine spoke, she held Andrew’s
gaze, unblinking, like a prowling cat.

“Well, yes, something like that.” Andrew
didn’t think now was the time to explain the extent of influence.
“Ben’s father asked that this matter be fully investigated. And
the…” Andrew almost said Agency, but caught himself. “The Embassy
got tasked with the investigation. As you’ve said, the local
authorities aren’t being too helpful at the moment.”

Severine rested her chin wearily on her fist
and looked up at the sky. The sleep-deprivation and adrenaline of
the past couple days were catching up with her even before the day
had really started. She looked back at Andrew and asked, “How is it
that you pulled the short straw to handle this?”

Andrew paused, deciding again that some
information was on a need-to-know basis. Until he had a clearer
picture. Right now everything was murky and so his level of trust
was low. But then it usually was.

“Mostly, I was in town and available,” he
answered.

Severine nodded. “What’s your plan?” She
asked.

Andrew scratched his stubble-covered chin.
Three days grown, his sparse beard was flecked with red. Somewhere
in his family’s past there had been a ginger.

He was not prepared for this question. He
hedged.

“Unhh. I’m reviewing what information I have.
I’ll select the best way forward based on my review.” Andrew didn’t
have a fully sketched out approach but was not going to admit that
to his only witness.

He continued, “I do need to know exactly what
happened in Mondulkiri.” He paused. “I realize that might be
difficult for you, but we do need to go through it.”

Severine looked down at the napkin in her
lap. “Not here.”

“OK. No, not here. I also plan to go out
there to the jungle, to cover the bases. So I will need your
guidance on that, with the location.”

Severine scrunched her nose, thinking,
wrinkles appearing on the bridge of her nose. She was about to ask
a question she’d wanted to ask Jeremy but had not allowed herself
to, for pride. There was, after all, a practical side to all of
this. There was always a practical side to death, which, in truth,
took the edge off of grief. She took a deep breath. “Are you going
to bring back his body?”

Andrew started in his seat, jolted by her
frankness. “Yes. If I am able to. But I’ll need your cooperation
before I go out there.”

On edge from this discussion and dreading
talking about Mondulkiri, Severine lifted her chin, exposing her
slim white throat. Her eyes were wide. “Am I some kind of a suspect
in this investigation?”

Overhead the fans whirred, the small electric
buzz and phtt-phtt-phtt of the metal blades a rhythmic beat. Andrew
studied Severine for a long minute. She held his gaze. He picked up
his coffee and took a slow sip, the steam wafting in the air near
his face. He shrugged.

“Ma’am, as I said, I simply need information
about what Ben was doing in Mondulkiri. And where exactly he was.”
Andrew sipped the beverage, the white cup obscuring his face.

“Fine.” She stood, pushing the chair back
hard against the slate floor. “But I’m late and I need to go to
work now. We can talk there during my lunch break. Here’s the
address. Come by at eleven. The children will be in class
then.”

Severine handed him a plain card with her
name and an address. She nodded at the waiter, who swept in to
clear her place.

Andrew read the card. Below Severine’s
information was the organization’s name, in French: La Maison des
Enfants D’Espère.

The House for Hope’s Children.

Severine watched him decipher the title with
his school boy French.

“See you at 11.” She turned and walked toward
the hotel lobby, disappearing behind the vast marble columns and
into the cool, quiet shadows.

Chapter 7

Andrew sat in the back of a raggedy tuk-tuk,
glancing occasionally at his watch. The orphanage was a long way
out, southwest of town, past the airport, near a small tributary of
the Mekong. The tributary ran full now, at the end of rainy season
and was used by all for cooking, bathing, transport and disposal,
serving as both plumbing and sewer. This far out, the poverty was
unadulterated, not mixed discretely, as it was downtown, between
fancy houses and fine clothing shops frequented only by wealthy
locals and tourists.

On the way out of town, Andrew had noticed
that they had picked up a tail. He wasn’t sure at first. He had
initially seen a motorcycle start to follow them when they passed
through the slums of Stung Meanchey. From there, Andrew had seen
that the biker stayed with them a little too steadily, too
doggedly, for it to be coincidence. But Andrew needed to shake it,
to be sure. He’d asked the tuk-tuk driver to wend and weave through
some side streets. The motorcycle, a crotch rocket, had increased
its efforts to follow, as Andrew had expected. It was an inexpert
tail, from the bike’s obvious turns, its driver hunched over,
wearing a dark helmet, focused on not losing sight of the tuk-tuk,
with no confidence that he could find it again. When Andrew was
certain it was a tail, he lost it.

But now they were running late. It was well
past 11:00 AM.

At last, the tuk-tuk turned off the main road
down a side street leading to the destination. It bumped and
jostled along the pitted dirt road. Andrew hung on to the metal bar
in the cab as he bounced on the seat in the back. When the tuk-tuk
got a few blocks from the orphanage, Andrew asked the driver to
stop so he could walk. He wanted to see and seeing meant slowing
down. He hopped out.

There were no sidewalks to speak of here.
Houses, if they could be called that, lined the dirt roads. Small
one-story shacks made of corrugated metal sheets, the main room
about 10x10 feet, opened directly onto the street. It was obvious
from the water line on several houses that these shacks flooded
during heavy rains. On the far side of the street an open sewer
paralleled the road. This too flooded during the rains, dumping its
contents into people’s front rooms.

Ahead of him, several bare-foot Cambodian
boys played a modified game of soccer, using a flip-flop as the
ball, and more flip-flops as goals. Their small feet kicked up
bowls of dust as they shifted the sandal back and forth along the
improvised playing field, their thin brown limbs moving the “ball”
expertly to the goal.

As Andrew walked by the game, play stopped
for a moment as the boys watched him. Not too many white men came
to this part of town. One brave young boy called out in perfect
English “Mister, can I have a dollar?” Andrew waved and kept
walking. He could see part of the orphanage sign ahead on the left.
“Espère”

******

A burly guard watched him approach from a
rusted metal lawn chair. Eight-foot high cement walls made the
orphanage look more like a prison than a playground.

Andrew approached the guard, who stood up as
Andrew got within five feet. The guard was not armed from what
Andrew could see but he looked like he knew how to handle
himself.

“I’m here to see Severine.”

“Name?”

“Andrew Shaw.”

The guard pulled out a walkie-talkie.

“Andrew Shaw, Ma’am?”

Andrew heard the response come through,
Severine’s voice crackly over the handheld: “Send him through,
Vith.”

The guard ambled toward the iron gate. A
thick steel padlock secured the heavy fence. Eyeing Andrew, Vith
pulled a massive set of jangling keys from his belt, selected the
correct key and unlocked the padlock, sliding the heavy black bolt
back and pulling open the gate. Vith gestured with his left hand
for Andrew to proceed inside.

Andrew stepped through the gate and surveyed
the open square. A bubbling fountain in the middle highlighted
stone elephants at play in the water. Along the edges were several
mahogany benches, each with a brass plaque, bearing names of
international donors. High concrete walls surrounded the courtyard
on three sides.

Directly in front of Andrew, the main
building, a two-story white structure showcased a lack of
architectural imagination, with sharp corners and no adornment. A
long hallway ran from the front toward the back of the building and
Andrew could hear high-pitched voices bouncing out of rooms off the
hallway, as children recited the alphabet and read fairy tales
aloud. Andrew sat down on a bench and waited. He ran his hand along
the wood of the bench. It had a fine grain, its wood from trees
harvested in-country.

Severine emerged from the main archway,
wiping her hands on a yellow dish towel. She looked different from
earlier this morning, Andrew saw. Rejuvenated. Relieved. Smiling.
She walked to the bench and stood in front of Andrew.

“You made it. Welcome.” She gestured around
the courtyard.

Andrew waved away a fly intent on biting his
bare arm. “Not without incident.” He explain his lateness, he
described a traffic accident he’d seen on the way, a collision
between a truck and a motodop whose driver had not been wearing a
helmet.

“Yes. That is the way here. There’s always
something that goes wrong. But you get used to it.” She shrugged.
“You have to.”

“Good to know.” He looked at his watch. “Is
this an OK time? I know you’d said eleven.” It was now just shy of
noon, the sun directly overhead.

“Yes. For a short visit. I’m quite behind
today since did not come in yesterday. My staff has mostly deserted
me today to help their families with the rice harvest.”

“Isn’t there a machine for that?” Andrew
asked.

“Not here. Here everything is done by
hand.”