More than Lust

After the photography excursion to Wat Arun, we, at last, returned to my apartment, fell into each other's arms without any awkwardness or question, and fucked like longtime lovers.

We moved to my bedroom, arms entwined, kissing and fondling, undressing each other, and stood at the foot of the bed, rocking against each other, feeling each other rise and heat up, until I gently lowered him onto his back on the bed, butt at the edge, and knelt between his thighs, feasting on his cock and balls and then moving my tongue lower.

There was no question who was top and bottom. We came to each other and me inside him naturally, as if we'd been long-term lovers.

"ilauv nih. ilauv nih. yk khnhom ilauvnih," he murmured, as I rose and moved between his thighs, lifting his ankles to my shoulders. I recognized that he, lost in his emotions, was speaking in Khmer, but I didn't know enough of the language to know if he wanted me to stop or continue. Sensing I needed some sort of agreement that I understood, he had the presence of mind to repeat it in French, a language I did speak. "À présent. À présent. Prends moi maintenant—Now. Now. Take me now."

I was in position. He was well open for him, as I could discern, hovering over him, one hand palming his sternum, the fingers of the other inside him, spreading him. He was begging me for it. "À present! À present!" I took the plunge, thrusting up inside him, as he cried out, "Oui! Oui! Baise-moi fort!—Yes! Yes! Fuck me hard!"

I answered the call, recklessly, overwhelmed with emotion, consumed by lust . . . without protection. I barebacked him and made him mine—there at the foot of the bed; then on the bed, putting him on all fours and fucking him from above and behind like a dog; and later in the tub, facing each other, legs overlapping legs, and Hak Srea rising and falling on my cock as he'd watched Sisowath Naradipo do on the mound of silk pillows in his dining pavilion. We were bound in faith, trust, and destiny with each other—fucking raw, without protection, with abandon, linking our fates, me breeding him again and again for hours, days, weeks, whenever we could get together.

And thus was born an intense, vigorous, and totally involving affair in the few weeks leading up to our dangerous foray into the brutal Khmer Rouge reign of terror in Cambodia.

* * * *

June 1979 to February 1980

The bright flame of lust and more of my sexual affair with Hak Srea proved to be temporary. We had less than three weeks before we were on the move into Cambodia—and once that started, we never again had an opportunity to merge and flare up.

We crossed into Cambodia at an outpost called Paoy Paet in two boxy military camouflaged Toyota Land Cruisers, no doubt surprising the guards on both sides of the barriers as no one was going into Cambodia in those days. If they could make it to the border alive at all, they were Cambodians trying to exit hell. The Thai guards must have realized that something was up because there were two ancient armored trucks waiting on the Cambodian side with what looked like a very important military man strutting around a contingent of Chinese soldiers. The Thai guards didn't even want to speculate why Chinese soldiers were there at the Cambodian border.

We had a couple of Agency men with us who obviously were more attuned to combat than to diplomacy, with Mike Mitchell, the chief of station at the Bangkok embassy, as the mission head. I was Mike's assistant, keeping hidden both that I was developing to be a Norodom Sihanouk specialist and that I spoke fluent French. Hak Srea was there as photographer and translator. A more senior Agency officer, a woman who looked hard as nails and highly competent, was there to show Sihanouk that the discussions were serious. But, as the man in the region, Mitchell was permitted to carry the ball in the operation and discussions. Although we knew she really was in charge—and no doubt Sihanouk did too—she mostly sat and looked regal. No one, of course, was able to pull off the regal look better than Sihanouk himself did. Mitchell, the officer who met us, the woman, and an Agency military type rode in the lead Land Cruiser, behind an armored truck and half of the Chinese soldiers, with Mitchell driving. Hak Srea and I were in the second car, driven by an Agency commando. The second truck, filled with Chinese soldiers, followed.

Prince Sisowath Naradipo did not accompany us. He was a survivor and not stupid, and he was no longer a patriot to anything. He did his part for money and protection in his Bangkok exile. He was key to our mission, however. He was the one with the connections to all parties. None of this would have been possible without him arranging it. He also must have convinced Heng Sen—General Heng Sen, but whether of the Cambodian or Chinese army I never was able to discern—to allow the meeting to happen. Heng Sen, the senior officer who was waiting for us on the Cambodian side of the border at Paoy Paet obviously was the man who held the fate of Norodom Sihanouk and the Samdech's entourage in his hands during that phase of the sometimes monarch's life. Whether or not he was actually a Chinese general, he quite obviously was Beijing's representative in Cambodia in terms of Norodom Sihanouk and, with his contingent of Chinese soldiers, was both the Samdech's protector and his jailer.

Sihanouk's prison was a sumptuous palace—as nearly so as accommodations in Cambodia at the time could be—in Siem Reap, on a lake with a view of the Angkor Wat temple complex on the other side of the lake. When we entered the palace and were introduced to Sihanouk, his much younger French-Cambodian wife, Monique; and what was left of Sihanouk's extended family—those whose heads the Khmer Rouge hadn't lopped off yet, Sihanouk made clear that the palace was his and had always been among the holdings of the Cambodian monarchs. During the introductions in the palace's entrance hall, Sihanouk's eyes kept going to Hak Srea, and my suspicion that they had a close, if possibly secret, familial relationship seemed confirmed.

The meeting occurred immediately, and didn't unfold in the palace. We were led, under heavy Chinese soldier guard out of the back of the palace and to the far end of a garden, into a grove of trees. Here, surprisingly enough, a richly colorful and huge Oriental carpet was laid out and ornate, formal upholstered sofas and club chairs were arranged facing each other. A well-stocked drinks table was off to the side, manned by a couple of expert waiters. Smudge pots were burning around the periphery of the seating area. This hardly was roughing it, which was accentuated by Sihanouk and Monique themselves, the only ones other than General Heng Sen who appeared in this sitting area. Both the monarch and his wife were outfitted in rich silks, Monique, who carried a nervous and frequently yapping little toy poodle, being dressed appropriately for a Paris nightclub. I knew that she had been a beauty queen Sihanouk had met while judging a beauty pageant in Saigon in 1955 and had immediately swept all of his other wives away to marry.

As an explanation for the silvan venue, Sihanouk matter-of-factly said, "Every inch of the palace is equipped to hear any one of us pass gas. They weren't all installed by General Heng Sen." Monique twittered at that. General Heng Sen maintained a stoic expression. Mike Mitchell said, "I will take it as a sign that you will listen seriously to our proposal."

"Yes, of course," Sihanouk said. "Life and death options."

That was the first I was clued in to how strong and clever this man was. I had been confused by what I had studied of his life to this point. He was a pampered playboy and hedonist dilettante who had first come to the throne at the age of nineteen, a beautiful young man. He was now pudgy and obviously still pampered—pampered even though buried in a hell hole of a country smoldering in poverty and death. But he had survived and maneuvered with either the talent of a magician or an extraordinarily lucky man for decades of political machinations. It was a good thing I had come to see him in action. After this visit I never again questioned either his survivability or his loyalty and concern for his people and nation.

In the same vein, my assessment of his glamourous wife also changed. Every time I had glimpses of her, in video, photo, or in person, she was carrying a yappy fluffy poodle, but I came to understand it—and her beauty—were props and that she was her husband's equal in steel in the spine and survivability. The poodle was a barrier between her and unpleasantries or the demand for quick reply. All the time she spent trying to calm her dog before she responded to a question or statement, though, was being spent in assessing the situation and formulating a survivable response.

The meeting, which was conducted in French, was brief and comprehensive. Sihanouk made no bones about his precarious position and that he was coming close to needing to go somewhere or be prepared to be martyred in Cambodia. He also made no bones about revealing that, as they had done for him before, he could go to China or North Korea. He negotiated with Mike Mitchell and the nearly silent senior Agency woman like a Boston Lawyer. What surprised me and drew my admiration was how broad his demands for maintaining a shepherding position with the Cambodian people and the welfare of his extended family were and how they overshadowed anything that he was demanding for himself.

The meeting ended with his thanks for the offer and a "We'll think about it," and then he turned into a generous host.

After a very pleasant evening of a banquet that we were surprised to be able to enjoy in a country on its knees in starvation, we were all sent to bed in the extensive, well-appointed palace. During dinner, when I had hoped to be able to enjoy with Hak Srea, we instead were separated. Hak Srea had drawn the close interest of General Heng Sen—with me hoping that the general wasn't exploring Hak Srea's possible relationship to Norodom Sihanouk—and Monique saddled up to me. From an analyst perspective I'm glad she did. She didn't want sex. She and her husband had discerned that I was to follow them through life now for the Agency, and she wanted to make sure I understood their perspectives on everything.

"I want you to know," she said at one point, "that this banquet isn't as we usually eat. My husband is strict about his family not indulging. This meal has been provided by the Chinese. They want you to know the lengths they will go to to keep the Samdech in their orbit."

"You wanted me to know this?" I asked, although, as a matter of fact, in both interested and relieved me greatly. It was extremely fortunate I had been included in this mission. It would always give me a balanced view of the man—and woman—I was making a career of specializing in.

And then she shocked me further.

"Yes, we want you, in particular, to know this. You are, after all, aren't you, the man who has been selected by the CIA to live our lives with us and to tell your government who we really are and what we're really up to?"

She knew. And she was saying that Norodom Sihanouk also knew that I, here as an administrative assistant for Mike Mitchell, would have importance in how the U.S. government would assess the rest of their lives. I could only assume that Sisowath Naradipo had informed them—or maybe Hak Srea had.

I marked the intent to broach this issue with Hak Srea later in the night, having every intent to somehow sneak into his room for sex, being in deep need of continuing what had been our wanton lust right up to leaving Bangkok for the border. But that wasn't to be. I did find his room and start to slip into the door. But I was too late. Hak Srea was there on the bed, but he wasn't alone. General Heng Sen, naked and in high rut, was on top of him. They were engaged in a very sweaty, vigorous fuck.

I tried not to be frosty with Hak Srea the next day when our planned return to Bangkok had had to be put off. The nearly silent woman from Washington had taken ill in the night. She said she was recovering, but the roads were not much more than pitted trails back to the border and it was decided she needed rest and sleep before leaving. Personally, I thought it was a ploy—that she was feigning illness to give Mike Mitchell time and opportunity to have another argument go at Sihanouk. But even so, for the look of it, the need for Hak Srea and me to be present was denied. Hak Srea had made no secret of his burning desire to visit and photograph the Angkor Wat complex across the lake, and we were given leave to take two of the Chinese soldiers and make that trip.

Hak Srea did get his photographs, but on the way back tragedy struck. He was fiddling with the camera when the Land Cruiser hit deep rut in the road. The camera fell out of the window and smashed on the ground. There was nothing we could do. We'd received the message that the mission was preparing to leave for Bangkok and we could not go back to Angkor Wat to rephotograph.

In retrospect, I found that incident as questionable as that the woman from Washington had really been too sick in the night to travel that morning. Hak Srea had made such a fuss of how important photographing the temple complex was to him that it conveniently fell into someone else's plans. I don't know whether it was the Agency's plans or Hak Srea's, or Sihanouk's or—as I was so afraid—General Heng Sen's, but, as we were leaving, Hak Srea didn't appear for the journey.

General Heng Sen provided the explanation. "The Samdech has not had a chance to talk with the young man and wants to do so. And the young man was set on photographing at Angkor Wat. He's been asked to stay on a little longer and I will see that he gets back to the Thai border and that Prince Sisowath knows he can be met there."

I looked to Mike Mitchell in panic, wondering if he was as suspicious as I was that Hak Srea was really a relative of Sihanouk's at a time and in a context when the Khmer Rouge was treating members of the Samdech's family as hostages that could be lopped off one by one to keep him under control. But Mike didn't have any problem with Hak Srea staying, even though Hak Srea wasn't there to confirm his interest in staying. Could it be, I wondered, that the chief American spy in Thailand welcomed having an agent at Sihanouk's court?

Could it be that Sihanouk knew Hak Srea was a son of his and wanted to have him close? Or worse, General Heng Sen having fucked Hak Srea the night before, apparently with Hak Srea's acquiescence, did the general want to enjoy the handsome young man as much as I had for a few weeks before we came here?

Whatever the case, it was completely out of my hands and Hak Srea didn't even make an appearance to see us off for the trip back to the border. I had no opportunity to even say good-bye. Our torrid, flaming-hot affair had been short-lived and cut off so brutally.

I didn't hear from Hak Srea after I returned to Bangkok and, despite frequently checks with Prince Sisowath, I could get no information from him either. Mike Mitchell claimed no knowledge or interest in where Hak Srea was or what he might be doing. But, then, if Mitchell was running Hak Srea as a deep agent in place, he would not claim any knowledge or interest in him—to me or anyone else, if he didn't deem I had the need to know. That Hak Srea and I had been lovers wouldn't be something to admit to the Bangkok chief of station.

Not long after that, Sihanouk, Monique, and their entourage were evacuated to Beijing to live in exile there. Sihanouk had accepted China's offer, not that of the United States. The extraction had been messy and, as the Agency's Sihanouk expert, I'd been able to read the cables on that. At the last minute, the Khmer Rouge, having agreed to Sihanouk and Monique making a short visit to Beijing, had declared that his extended family and entourage would have to remain as surety that Sihanouk would return. Sihanouk was having nothing of this, though, and had told all concerned that he wanted his family and everyone in his entourage to see Beijing as well. The Khmer Rouge did not give permission, but General Heng Sen managed to get everyone on board and flying to Beijing as Sihanouk demanded—if he was going to go anywhere at all.

Yet another stand I admired him and Monique for taking and one that the world, seeing him merely as a mercurial tool of the communist world, would never know of.

Having access, I managed to find among the secret dispatches the passenger lists of who were on that flight to Beijing and thus who was with Sihanouk in safety. Hak Srea's name didn't appear on any of those lists.

Months later, in early 1980, when I visited Sisowath Naradipo to serve his sexual fetish and do my bit to keep him as a Bangkok Station asset, he brought out a photograph that had been laminated onto a photo frame and handed it to me.

"Here, I have received this from Hak Srea in Cambodia. He asked me to give it to you."

It was a panorama photograph of the illuminated Angkor Wat temple complex taken at night, with its reflection in the lake that stood between it and Sihanouk's Siem Reap palace. Hak Srea signed it on the back, giving a year, 1979, but no day or month.

"When did you receive this? When was this taken?" I asked.

"I have no idea when it was taken. I received it since that last time you visited me. But communications are so difficult between Cambodia and Thailand that there is no way of knowing when he sent it."

I received nothing else from Hak Srea. Even as Sihanouk was negotiating his escape from Cambodia, Vietnam was invading the country and displacing the murderous Pol Pot regime of the Khmer Rouge, which went to the hills and jungles and continued its acts of genocide into the 1980s. The family members Sihanouk managed to get out of the country were the only ones who claimed to have outlived the Khmer Rouge efforts to exterminate the Cambodian royals.

If Hak Srea was related to Sihanouk and had not gone to Beijing with him, I could only conclude he hadn't lived beyond 1979.

* * * *

November 2012

When Norodom Sihanouk miraculously returned to Cambodia once more as king, in 1993, albeit under a constitutional monarchy, I was cooking along as the Agency's Sihanouk specialist, but when he abdicated once more in favor of his son Norodom Sihamoni in 2004, I became tired of tying my existence to him and retired the next year, at fifty, from the Agency and from being the government's Norodom Sihanouk expert. I went to Georgetown University for a doctorate and then landed back at American University as a professor on Southeast Asian affairs.

It was in this capacity, and in recognition of the many articles I had written on the machinations of Norodom Sihanouk that I was invited to a memorial service in Washington, D.C., sponsored by the large Cambodian community in the nation's capital in November of 2012 to mark Sihanouk's death, at ninety, the previous month.

It was natural that, based on the specialty I had pursued in my career, that I would know many of those who attended the memorial service, but at the reception afterward I found I knew more of them than I had realized.

"Is that you, Gene? Gene Calvert? Do you remember me?"

Hak Srea. I don't know why I recognized him immediately. I had thought him long dead, so it wasn't in the realm of possibilities to see him here. But, of course, if he was still alive, since he obviously was, this was a natural place, time, and event to run across him again. It wasn't a physical appearance thing, although he did look like a mature Norodom Sihanouk would have looked if Sihanouk hadn't loved being pampered and having his wine and food too indulgently. The current Hak Srea was as elegantly turned out as Sihanouk would have been, but he was tall, straight, and trim. He did, though, walk with a limp and with the aid of a cane. It wasn't his visage that made me immediately aware that it was Hak Srea, though. It was his voice. I had never forgotten the sound of the man's voice.