In the Eye of the Hurricane

THE threat of a direct Communist attack against Phnom-Penh has lessened, but the graceful, Gallic-flavored capital still has the air of an antic Alamo. Soviet-made heavy artillery pieces stare out over the empty highways to the south. No one is allowed to enter or leave the city from dusk to dawn without special permission. Civil servants come to work in khakis, including Deputy Premier Sirik Matak, and battalions of bureaucrats spend afternoons drilling in the city parks. As they roll through the streets in their commandeered trucks and buses, Cambodian soldiers wave to the cheering populace. The martial fever is such that the regime's inexperienced 35,000-man army has grown to a green giant of 100,000 volunteers.

With Phnom-Penh in the eye of the Indochina hurricane, tourist hotels are nearly empty. Knots of frightened Vietnamese gather at the airport for flights to Saigon every day; by night, the air port is closed while U.S. supplies are flown in aboard unmarked planes. Yet the mood of the city's 500,000 people is closer to giddy apprehension than grim determination. The floating nightclubs along the Mekong, with their dark-eyed Khmer girls dancing to The Tennessee Waltz, still do thriving business.

Though the embattled sanctuaries are less than a day's drive from Phnom-Penh, the capital's closest contact with war so far has been the Channel 11 news telecasts from Saigon, which feature clips of the fighting. Some residents wonder, however, just how long the city will remain so remote from the war. As one Western military observer in Phnom-Penh warns: "I wouldn't be surprised to see Viet Cong mortars dropping in here as this struggle goes on and on."

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