Supernotes by Agent Kasper

in their air-conditioned Toyotas. We get into a truck, a beat-up piece of shit, and bring real help to the people who live in the garbage dumps of the capital….Have you seen where those poor bastards stay? Have you ever smelled the stench of those places? I imagine you haven’t. Well, I have, and I can tell you that after you’ve been there you have to throw away all your clothes. Then you wash yourself for hours. We go there every Thursday. I mean, I
used
to go there….I hope the others are still going. It’s just us, a few American volunteers, and a French monk.”
    “I was told your girlfriend took care of some of those children….”
    “Patty’s a veterinarian, which gives her enough training to treat an eye infection or childhood bronchitis….Listen, let’s not waste time. I don’t think any of this has anything to do with why I’m in Prey Sar prison.”
    “You’re right,” Lanna says with a smile. He clears his throat and says, “When I asked for information about you, the people in Rome told me you’re an ex-Carabiniere. Also an ex-pilot for Alitalia. I know you own the bar called Sharky’s, near the Tonlé Sap. When I met you, you were at an evening fund-raiser for the foundation with the Comboni Fathers. And yet, despite all that, there are a bunch of strange stories going around about you….”
    “Is that important?”
    “It could be, if you want me to help you.”
    “What more do you want to know?”
    “What is a man like you doing in Cambodia? How did you happen to come here? That’s what I want to know.”
    “Who do
you
think I am?”
    “Someone who stepped on some important toes.”
    “Right…Listen, Mr. Consul, that would be a long story. I’m afraid we don’t have enough time for me to tell it.”
    “Start. I’ll come back tomorrow and the next few days as well.”
    Kasper bobs his head. This is just diplomatic dicking around. Maybe the last in a long line of booby traps. And in any case, a torment.
    He’d like to tell Lanna, Better yet, you talk to me. Talk to me about the normal world: about an evening at the movies, or a boat trip, or a simple plate of pasta. Talk to me about civilization and its little, fundamental, everyday stupidities.
    So that I won’t die even before I’m killed.
    He sighs. “You can push me to talk, but it’s no use, believe me. Remembering isn’t…it doesn’t do any good.”
    “Start,” Lanna insists. “Start wherever you want.”
    “
Start,
you say. Where do I start? Well, maybe ten years ago, in Rome. It was 1998. No, I’m wrong—it was ’97, eleven years ago. It was April ’97. I could start there….”

12
Our Man in Phnom Penh
    ROS Headquarters, Villa Ada, Rome
    April 1997
    The Ferrari 348 is the flaming red color you expect from a Ferrari.
    It’s shiny, gleaming in every detail, as if it’s just been washed and polished. Kasper walks past it on his way to the headquarters building. The young subofficer who’s escorting him gestures toward the car as if to say, “Not bad, huh?” Then, without moving his head an inch, he whispers: “We found it yesterday with half a dozen other cars, Mercedes and BMWs, all top-of-the-line machines. The Roman Mafiosi treat themselves well.”
    Walking on, the subofficer shifts topics. “Your meeting will take place in the bar.”
    “In the bar. Of course.”
    The coffee bar in the ROS headquarters is located on an interior corner of the barracks, across from the main building. Informal meetings, the meetings where things are actually decided, often take place here.
    It’s a beautiful April day in Rome. Kasper has arrived a few minutes early, practically escorted by the joggers heading for Villa Ada, one of the loveliest public parks in the capital and home to the Carabinieri’s Talamo barracks.
    Everything here evokes a long and busy past.
    Via Salaria, a few meters from the park entrance, was used two thousand years ago as a route for the transport of loads of salt from the Adriatic