Sangha was palpably agitated, frowning as he pushed into the room, barely allowing the door time to swing back. He found Heng dragging meditatively on another Ara; the tin ashtray on the bald man's pitted desk was crowded with crushed butts. Sluggish rotations from a steel-bladed desk fan occasionally stirred the clinging smell of nicotine and smoke.
Heng mutely closed a small leatherbound account book, and the two local thugs he employed as bodyguards glanced up at Sangha's entrance with identical dark glances. They possessed the muscled but softening bulk of ancient baby-faced eunuchs, the fabric of each man's cheap suit taut at the shoulders and across the chest.
"Where's Nary?" Sangha asked. And from the thirty-year-old man's (the boy's, Heng thought) strained tone, the news had already found its way to him.
Heng leaned back placidly into his chair, absently tapping the ash from the end of his cigarette, careful to avoid marking the cuff of his impeccable white suit. The daytime insects droned sharply into the moist Cambodian heat, and the sound crept through the open window and the yellowing curtains along with the occasional stray's bark, and rapidfire bursts of conversation in native Khmer. Inside, the makeshift office was cramped, cheap, but kept neat like Heng's Buddhist-bare scalp.
"Sold," Heng informed him calmly. "To the American."
An incredulous pause.
"American? Which—"
"The gun runner," Heng clarified. He watched worry, jealousy, rage flash in quick sequence along Sangha's vaguely ugly face. Flacid lips, nervous inkspill eyes—looking for all the world like a dazed boy whose favorite plaything had been taken away. His mouth worked soundlessly for a moment before Sangha forced out:
"I wasn't asked. I didn't approve."
Nothing, Heng reflected, is quite as dangerous as a child with a little power.
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