Sundermann had sunk deep into his wicker chair and watched Maier and Carissa fight over the best parts of the dinner they were sharing. Eclectic world music dripped from invisible speakers through the Foreign Correspondents Club. A faint breeze from the river cut through the heat.
Maier was pleased. His mission was ending back where it had begun. Down in the street, the hustlers, the limbless and the hopeless congregated just as they had for days, weeks, months and years. Tourists stumbled along, avoiding the d**g dealers and taxi girls who tried to separate the visitors from their cash. A little circus of cross-cultural absurdities.
But things were looking up. Cambodia was coming out of its self-prescribed dark age, blinking, insecure, proud and with so little care for her past that her
