Reaksmey tore out of the dingy massage parlour into the midday sun, knees pumping, wide eyes casting about madly like a thief fleeing the mother of all beatdowns. Which is exactly what he was.
His tiny bubble-wrapped prize was stuffed hurriedly in a scruffy gym-bag slung over one shoulder, rattling around with his traditional woven bokator wraps and a rat’s nest of crumpled US dollars and Cambodian Riel.
He heard pissed off Russian-accented shouts behind him as he danced across the parlour courtyard, past a dozing Khmer security guard, snaking between a haphazard maze of motos. Bursting clear of the courtyard, he directed a nonchalant kick at the rearmost moto causing a satisfying domino effect of toppled bikes.
A chorus of gangsters howled with blind rage as Reaksmey streaked onto the traffic-snarled Samdach Sothearos Boulevard, hanging a sharp left.
His beat-up Chuck Taylors slapped frantically on the reddish cobblestones, skipping over the gnarled roots of chankiri trees whose avaricious reach extended beyond their planter boxes and into the sidewalk, pushing aside pavers and fracturing plaster walls.
Behind him came the sound of furious attempts to kickstart motos, and a scrum of enraged bruisers giving chase on foot.
Oh shit.
Reaksmey picked up the pace. With a fighter’s grace he pirouetted between two sun-beaten street vendors dragging carts of snails across the sidewalk. A couple of his pursuers clattered headlong into the carts, sending snails, tattered banknotes and cursing vendors flying as still more pursuers crashed through.
Chancing a glance over his shoulder, Reaksmey counted more than a dozen men on foot chasing hard, followed by three more who’d just managed to get their motos righted and firing.
Notgoodnotgoodnotgood. Gotta get off the road.
In a heartbeat Reaksmey came upon the back entrance to Phsar Kapko, a tangled riot of corrugated iron, tarpaulins, bungee cords and sackcloth housing a sprawling market in the most claustrophobic of conditions. He ducked inside and immediately tried to lose himself among the vendors, slowing to a brisk nothing-to-see-here walk.
The purloined artefact felt like it was burning a hole in Reaksmey’s gym-bag. If what he’d heard was to be believed, it was easily the most valuable item in the entire market. It was death. It was deliverance. It was the dumbest fucking idea he’d ever had.
He hadn’t even had a chance to look at it and here he was, possibly about to die for this...thing. In the two weeks since it rolled off the production line, this bubble-wrapped oddity had been on quite the journey: slipping out the back door of a Shenzhen Special Economic Zone factory into the hands of a triad fixer, who flicked it to an English financier in exchange for an ‘arrangement’ with an amenable Port of London official. The English financier brokered a deal with a Laotian drug-runner who, in turn, traded it with a Hanoi-based Nigerian crypto miner in exchange for undisclosed services rendered. From there it changed hands at least three more times before ending up with the Phnom Penh Russians, whose dodgy massage parlour is about the least subtle front for an organised crime syndicate this side of the Mekong.
Reaksmey knew none of this. All he knew was he was in serious fucking trouble and his cousin, Dara-of-the-batshit-ideas, had offered him a way out.
Listen to me, Rax. You’re never going to be able to pay back what Visal’s crew say you owe them. $5,000USD! Who do you know with that kind of money? When you’re being ripped off like that, the only answer is to rip somebody else off! And I know just the right suckers…
A night earlier, Dara had been sinking Angkor Beers with single-minded purpose at his favourite hostess bar on the unsavoury Street 51 when he overheard that fat fuck, Dimitri Ivanov, talking some bullshit about a device.
A device? What sort of device, Dara?
That’s the thing, Rax. Dimitri didn’t even know! It’s so valuable the boss wouldn’t tell him. All he knows is it’s cutting edge tech that’s not even supposed to be on the market yet. This is the only one outside of the hands of the developers in the whole world!
The developers? What developers? Who are the developers?
The fuck should I know? I dunno. Amazon, maybe. Or could be Google. DARPA?
DARPA?! You’re full of shit Dara. You’re telling me the Phnom Penh Russian mafia, the Russian mafia who couldn’t make it in Russia OR Vietnam – we’re talking C-league Russian mafia here – have US military tech hidden in their shitty massage parlour?
I was just spit-balling dude, fuck off. Anyway, I heard what I heard. The Russians have some stolen tech at the parlour. It’s supposed to be worth like seven figures according to fat fuck Dimitri. You get it, you steal it, you get out. Then you can sell it or just give it Visal to cancel your debt.
Sell it? How am I supposed to sell it? We don’t even know what it is.
Chill out, man. I know a guy. Anyway, do you have any better ideas?
Reaksmey did not, in fact, have any better ideas.
As he tried to lose himself in the sweltering sprawl of Phsar Kapko, he wished yet again that he’d had a solitary better idea. But there was no time to enjoy some hard earned self-flagellation – at that moment a meaty Russian hand burst through a beaded curtain beside him, seizing his throat. Reaksmey chopped at it viciously with his forearm, at the same time throwing a blind knee in the direction of his assailant. He felt ribs give way, and followed up with a sharp elbow mincing the cartilage of his would-be attacker’s nose.
Pandemonium erupted around him as vendors screamed, trinkets flew every which way and Russian heavies burst through stalls, vaulted over tables and smashed through painstakingly arranged displays of market goods, looking to encircle the escaping thief.
Fight or flight? Reaksmey chose, and he fucking flew. He may not have been an ideas man, but he wasn’t suicidal. As his pursuers closed, Reaksmey exploded into action, leaping headfirst over a table spread with aromatic spice mixes, tucking and rolling before launching again. Like a horse given its head, he jumped, charged, zigged and zagged indiscriminately through the dizzying hive of Phsar Kapko, paying little attention to the whereabouts of his pursuers.
These were big, musclebound barangs. If they thought they could keep up, let them fucking try.
Shoppers and shop assistants leapt out of Reaksmey’s way as he barrelled through the market before erupting onto Street 9. He scanned the street frantically before spotting what he was after. An untended moto sat idling, its owner a few steps away chatting to a coffee cart girl. Reaksmey lunged for it, straddling the seat, kicking the bike into gear and squealing into traffic before its owner registered the affront.
He cast a look back and saw the angry owner charging into traffic, fist raised, while behind him a sorry mob of exhausted gangsters swarmed out of Phsar Kapko.
Reaksmay pulled back the throttle and gunned it to Dara’s house, blood pounding in his ears. He grabbed reassuringly at the bag strap over his shoulder.
Whatever this thing is, it better be worth it.