in pressed uniforms seemed to be guarding the rest of the soldiers. There were about two dozen of them patrolling the perimeter of the camp, heavily armed with Chinese-made AK-47 knockoffs, RPGs, M16s, and Vietnam War–era 60mm light mortars. Guards guarding guards. Maybe, Ford thought, it would be like the Wizard of Oz: all you had to do was kill a few—or one—and everyone else would fall into line.
At one o’clock sharp, Ford rose from his hiding place and walked toward the valley on an open trail, making noise and whistling. When he came within a few hundred yards of the white house, a burst of gunfire shredded the leaves above his head and sent him to the ground. A moment later three soldiers converged, yelling in a hill language. One held a gun to his head while the others roughly searched his clothing. Finding him unarmed, they jerked him to his feet, pulling his hands behind him and tying them, and pushing him forward along the trail. In a few minutes he was standing on the verandah, in front of Brother Number Six.
If Six was surprised to see him, he didn’t show it. He rose from his rocking chair and strolled over, examining Ford as if he were a piece of interesting sculpture, his birdlike head bobbing up and down. Ford examined his captor in turn. The man was dressed like a French colonial official in an embroidered white silk shirt, khaki shorts, knee-high black socks, and wingtips. He was smoking latakia in an expensive English Comoy pipe, generating fragrant blue clouds of smoke. His face was delicate, almost feminine, a puckered scar above his left eyebrow. As he circled Ford, he smacked his red, girlish lips, his white hair slicked back with Vitalis.
Inspection complete, Six walked over to a verandah post, knocked the dottle out of his pipe, reamed it, and then, while leaning on the post, repacked and lit it. The process took a long five minutes.
“Tu parles français?” he finally said, his voice unexpectedly smooth, buttery, his French elegant.
“Oui, mais je préfère to speak English.”
A smile. “You not carry identification.” His English was much cruder, with a nasal Khmer accent.
Ford said nothing. In the door of the house, the stooped figure appeared, the advisor that Ford had earlier noted. He was dressed in loose khakis, his thinning gray hair hanging limply over his forehead, dark circles under his eyes, perhaps fifty years old.
Six spoke to the arrival in standard Khmer. “We found an American, Tuk.”
Tuk peered at Ford with his drooping, sleepy eyes.
“Your name?” Six asked.
“Wyman Ford.”
“What you doing here, Wyman Ford?”
“Looking for you.”
“Why?”
“To have a conversation.”
Six slid a knife out of his pocket and said quietly, “I cut your testicle off. Then we have conversation.”
Tuk held up a restraining hand and turned to Ford, speaking in a much more practiced, British-accented English. “You are from where, exactly, in America?” The lidded eyes closed, remained closed for a moment, then opened.
“Washington, D.C.”
Six gestured lightly with the knife toward Tuk and spoke in Khmer. “You’re wasting time. Let me work on him with the knife.”
Tuk ignored him and turned to Ford. “You are in the government, then?”
“Excellent guess.”
“Who did you come here to have a conversation with?”
“Him. Brother Number Six.”
There was a sudden, freezing silence. After a moment, Six waved the knife in his face. “Why you want meet me?”
“To accept your terms of surrender.”
“Surrender?” Six pushed his face in close. “To who?”
Ford looked up into the sky. “Them.”
Both men looked into the empty sky.
“You have . . .” Ford smiled and glanced at his watch, “. . . about a hundred and twenty minutes before the Predator drones and cruise missiles arrive.”
Six stared.
“Do you want to hear the terms?” Ford asked.
Six pressed the flat of the knife blade into Ford’s throat, giving it just a slight turn. He could feel it begin to bite into his flesh. “I cut your throat!”
Tuk laid a light hand on Six’s arm. “Yes,” he said easily. “We want to hear the terms.”
The knife blade relaxed and Six stepped back.
“You have two options. Option A: you don’t surrender. In two hours, your mine will be flattened by cruise missiles and Predator drones. Then the CIA will come in to clean up—to clean you up. Maybe you die, maybe you escape. Either way, you’ll be hunted to the end of your days by the CIA. You will have no rest in your old age.”
A pause.
“Option B: you surrender to me, abandon the