Maier almost saw the trap before it sprang. Everything just happened a little too quickly. He’d been ground down by the Teacher’s incessant talking.
As the long day slowly faded into night, Kanitha, wearing a torn pair of trekking pants, a lycra sports top and a faded baseball cap, was the first to go in. Shouting for help in Laotian, she slowly descended from the ridge above the camp. The prettiest Trojan horse Maier could imagine was on its way.
The compound looked like the stage set for an action B-movie, a square space dotted with simple huts and ringed by a bamboo palisade three meters high, topped by barbed wire. A couple of makeshift watchtowers, little more than wooden platforms with grass roofs looming above the bamboo walls, stood unguarded. Jungle LEGO.
As soon as the girl re
