The Corsican

by William Heffernan

  “If there’s fighting, Jean will want to fight.” There was no resistance in Maria’s voice. It was purely an observation about her son.

  “He can fight with Corsicans if the island is invaded. But you tell him I said he must not let them take him into their army and use him like so much garbage.” He squeezed her hands. “There are business matters that will have to be looked after while I’m in this place. Let him do some of these things. But guide him. He doesn’t have your wisdom.” He released her hands so he could make a circular gesture with his own. “Let him think he’s making these decisions by himself. But point him in the right direction. Counsel him. Right now he’s so busy with this young Frenchwoman he wants to marry, he won’t even notice.” His voice had taken on a tone of distaste as he mentioned the woman.

  “She’s a good woman, Buonaparte,” Maria said.

  “Yes, but she’s not strong. A strong man needs a strong woman. Only weak men need the other kind, so they can have someone to dominate.”

  “What would you know about it?” she said. “You married the first peasant girl you saw in the mountains.” There was a slight smile on her face. “A little movement here, a little movement there, and you were like some poor goat, being led to slaughter.”

  “But I was lucky. At least you knew how to cook,” he snapped.

  “Cook!” She snorted. “In those first years I could have fed you sheep droppings and you wouldn’t have known the difference.”

  He laughed softly, then leaned to her and kissed her forehead, allowing his hand to run gently along her cheek. “The time will pass,” he whispered. “Then there will be many years together.”

  “Who knows?” she said. “Maybe the Germans will come and set you free.”

  “All that will mean is that our faces will be washed by German spit instead of French spit,” he said. He gripped her hands again. “This is why you must keep close watch on business matters. We will need money when this war is over. I want a new life for all of us then, and I have plans for it. But you must be careful of the police. They’ll be watching you.”

  “The police always watch, but they never see anything,” Maria said. She stroked his cheek. “Don’t worry, my Buonaparte. Everything will be cared for.” She smiled. “Don’t forget, I also learned at Papa’s knee.”

  Chapter 6

  VIET NAM, OCTOBER 1946

  Matthew Bently ran one hand along his close-cropped, military-styled hair. He looked about his sparsely furnished office, which was located at the ground-floor rear of the same building that housed the International Restaurant and Bar, one of colonial Saigon’s favorite watering holes. The street door to the small office identified it as Tiger Export Ltd., one of the many fronts being used by the OSS during its ongoing transition into the new Central Intelligence Agency. Inside the office he could still smell the heavy cologne that had surrounded Benito Pavlovi as he sat before his desk a few minutes before. So this is how it would be now, he thought. The same shady deals in peacetime that had existed during the war. He glanced at the stainless-steel Rolex on his wrist, noting that he had an hour before he met Pavlovi in the bar upstairs to confirm the meeting requested by this man Sartene. He reached out and pressed a button on the square wooden intercom on his desk. A gravelly voice responded with a terse “Yes, sir.”

  “Mike, get me Charlie Metcalf at the embassy,” he said. He released the button without waiting for a response, then pushed himself up from the small, square military desk. Big covert export company, he thought. They paint a sign on the door and then furnish the damned place with GI-issue furniture. He walked to the window and stared out into the narrow street that ran along the west side of the building. Except for the door to the office, the entire ground floor of the building was filled with open-air shops, selling everything from seafood to clothing to jewelry, and each, as he well knew, had a back room where the more desirable black-market goods were proffered.

  The buzzer on the intercom snapped him back, and he returned to the desk and pressed the button.

  “Mr. Metcalf is on the line, sir,” the gravelly voice announced.

  “Thanks, Mike,” he said, releasing the button and picking up the telephone receiver. “Hi, Charlie. How are things in the world of the living?” he said.

  “You call this living?” a thick voice came back.

  They had been out together the night before, and the severe hangover Metcalf was now certainly suffering hung in his voice.

  “I’ve heard back from our friend in Vientiane,” he said, following the procedure of not using names over telephone lines they all knew the Vietnamese monitored. “He thinks he can handle our order, but wants to meet again there to iron things out.”

  “So?” Metcalf groaned.

  “There’s one hitch. Seems he’s done business with us before, so he wants someone higher up along who can agree on terms. Just so the game isn’t changed halfway through.”

  Metcalf grunted. “I wish I could get that for myself,” he said.

  “So what do I tell him? He wants to meet in two days at his place.”

  “Tell him yes,” Metcalf said. “I’ll talk to the boss and find out who we can send along and get back to you in ten minutes. You’ll be going, right?”

  “Right.”

  “Okay, talk to you in ten.”

  Matt replaced the receiver and remained standing by the desk. A few inches from the telephone was the letter he had received from his father two days before. The South Dakota return address on the envelope still gave him a sense of warmth, even if the contents of the letter had not.

  His father was pressuring him to return, to “take up his role,” as he had put it, in their Pierre banking concern. A nice office overlooking the wide, murky Missouri River, he mused. Listening to the endless arguments that the Missouri was the true course of the Mississippi and if it had been so mapped, it would be the longest river in the world. As if anybody really gave a damn.

  He had written back, tried to explain how he wanted to see the OSS through its transition. To make sure the nation had a decent intelligence system, never to be caught unprepared again as it had been in 1941. The argument sounded good to him, but he couldn’t help wondering what his strait-laced father would think if he knew his son’s major task at the moment was setting up an opium network. For the benefit of God and country and a few million addicts.

  He walked back to the window and looked out into the narrow, filth-strewn street. To his left a large black hearse drawn by a black ox came into view. As it passed, the windows on its sides revealed a flower-covered casket within. Behind the hearse, Vietnamese mourners, dressed in the traditional flowing white funeral garments, walked with eyes lowered. Right on cue, he thought. Divine fucking prophecy. Just what the hell I needed.

  The door to his office opened and a skinny, hawk-faced man entered and dropped a handful of papers on his desk. “Mr. Metcalf is on the phone again, colonel,” he said.

  “Mike. How many times do I have to tell you we don’t use rank? I’m just a nice American businessman, peddling Vietnamese goods.”

  Mike nodded. “Right, sir.” He pointed to the papers he had just placed on the desk. “Those are the bills of lading for some of the shit we just bought.”

  Bently shook his head. “Get out of here, Mike,” he said.

  As the door closed behind Mike, Bently picked up the receiver and glanced at his Rolex. “You’re a man of your word, Charlie. Ten minutes on the dot.”

  “I hope you like the rest of the conversation, boyo,” Charlie said. His voice sounded as though his hangover had intensified.

  Bently felt a tightening in his stomach. “Go ahead, Charlie. Tell me how you’re gonna fuck me this time.”

  Charlie cackled through his obvious pain. “The man upstairs has informed me that Malcolm Wainwright Baker, Yale, class of 1920, and our distinguished first counsel, will accompany you to Vientiane.” There was a long silence. “Are you there, my good man?” Charlie said, doing his best
imitation of Baker.

  “That’s wonderful, Charlie. The biggest asshole presently in the far east and you manage to get him just for me.”

  “Always try to please, old man.”

  “Fine. You tell Lord Ha Ha that our friend has a private airstrip at a new house he’s building outside Vientiane and that we’re going to meet there. It can handle small aircraft, so if he can arrange for one, we’ll leave day after tomorrow at nine A.M. and have him back in time for tea.”

  Metcalf made a scolding sound. “You know his lordship hates to fly.”

  “Fuck him. The man we’re seeing wants us to come and go unnoticed. So unless his lordship wants to go incognito, wearing a dress, we’ll have to oblige our Corsican friend.”

  “He might like that idea, actually,” Metcalf said.

  “Just tell him not to wear his fucking Yale Club tie, Charlie. It’s going to be hard enough to pass him off as it is.” He replaced the receiver with the sound of Metcalf’s laughter still flowing across the line. “Malcolm Wainwright Baker,” he said aloud. “Wonderful.”

  Forty-five minutes later he slid into a booth in the International Bar, across from Benito Pavlovi. The heavyset man was smiling at him, and he couldn’t help wondering if he would still be smiling when he met Baker.

  “All set,” Bently said, “Our first counsel, Malcolm Baker, will be coming along.”

  Benito nodded and began to look casually around the bar.

  “Nice place, isn’t it?” Bently said.

  “Yes. I always liked it,” Benito answered.

  “Oh. You’ve been here before.”

  Benito nodded. “I was here with Buonaparte when he bought it last year.”

  Bently stared across the table. “Sartene owns this place?”

  Benito nodded again. “He owns the whole building. You might say he’s your landlord.”

  Bently laughed. “We’re a great intelligence agency. I was told some Paris consortium owned it.”

  “Buonaparte does business under many names,” Benito said. “The only name he never uses is his own.”

  Chapter 7

  The World War II surplus jeep bounced down the narrow dirt road that led from the airstrip to the house. With each rut Malcolm Baker groaned and threw angry glances at the stone-faced Lao driver, who he was certain was making the short drive as unpleasant as possible. From the rear of the jeep Benito and Bently observed Baker’s performance: Benito with amusement, Bently with disgust. Throughout the flight, Baker had moaned his displeasure. Halfway through it, his normally tanned patrician face had taken on a gray tint that matched his neatly trimmed hair. It was only now beginning to return to its normal color.

  And the silly bastard was wearing his Yale Club tie, Bently thought, realizing for the hundredth time that day how much he’d like to strangle him with it.

  “We are almost there,” Benito said to the back of Baker’s head.

  “Thank God,” Baker sighed as he was tossed to the side by another jolt.

  Benito smiled. “I’m afraid Mr. Baker is not used to the jungle. You weren’t in the war, Mr. Baker?”

  Baker twisted in his seat but did not turn to face Benito, speaking instead into the side of the driver’s head. “I was in the diplomatic service during the last war,” he said. “During the Great War I was at university.”

  Bently rolled his eyes. At university, he thought. Now the asshole was even playing the anglophile. He looked at Benito and shrugged helplessly, hoping it would disassociate him from the fool. Benito smiled reassuringly.

  The jeep entered a sharp turn that almost threw Baker from his seat, then broke suddenly out of the cover of the forest and into a broad plain where the already oppressive heat immediately intensified. Bently and Benito had earlier removed their jackets and loosened their neckties. Only Baker had remained fully clothed, in a lightweight blue pinstripe that now looked as though he had showered in it.

  “Is that the house?” Baker called back, pointing to the massive white structure two hundred yards distant.

  “That’s it,” Bently snapped.

  The jeep groaned to a halt a few feet from the Japanese garden. Within a large cut in the earth at the garden’s center, Lao workmen were spreading a layer of clay.

  “Come up to the veranda where it’s cool,” Benito said. “I will go and find Buonaparte.”

  Baker watched Benito move heavily up the stairs and disappear into the house. As Bently moved past him, he reached out and took his arm. “What in heaven’s name is that?” he asked, indicating the garden with his chin.

  “I’m told it will be a Japanese garden,” Bently said.

  “And the hole?” Baker asked with a slight smirk.

  “A pond, I imagine.”

  Baker smiled indulgently. “Fits in with the house. A bit pretentious, this Corsican, eh?”

  Bently’s eyes hardened. “I think you’ll find Buonaparte Sartene to be many things, Malcolm. But I don’t think pretentious will be one of them.” He motioned with his eyes toward their driver, who was still seated in the jeep. “I also understand that many of the people here are bilingual, Malcolm.”

  Baker pursed his lips. “I hadn’t realized,” he said. “But a word to the wise.”

  They climbed the stairs to the veranda, Bently fighting to control his anger, Baker looking over his surroundings with a sense of aloof superiority.

  Twenty feet down the veranda, behind a bay window, Sartene and Benito looked out at the two men. They stood well back from the window, out of view, Sartene studying the man he had not seen before.

  “What do you think of this man Baker?” he asked Benito.

  “A pompous little clerk, who thinks quite highly of himself,” Benito said. “But still a clerk.”

  Sartene nodded. “And Bently?”

  “I like him,” Benito said.

  “Do you trust him?”

  “I’m like you, Buonaparte. I trust no one who hasn’t proved himself.”

  Sartene nodded again. “Let’s talk to this clerk. We’ll see if his brain matches his look.”

  They were seated in deck chairs around a low table at the corner of the veranda that offered a slight breeze off the river. The introductions had been formal and stiff, and as refreshments were served by a Lao servant, Sartene noted that Bently seemed uncomfortable.

  Baker dominated the conversation, praising the house and its location and inquiring into Sartene’s plans to grow rubber in the surrounding jungle. As he spoke, Sartene noticed that his lips remained pursed, barely moving to form the words. It was an affectation he had observed among so-called British aristocrats, one that had made him dislike them immediately.

  And Baker fit the mold perfectly, he thought. High cheekbones, patrician nose, a touch of arrogance in his blue eyes. He was tall and slender, in his late forties, and his suit was of good quality, even though it was rumpled now by the heat of midday. At least we know he sweats, Sartene thought, recalling the great pains the British upper classes took to avoid revealing that human function. The jaw was neither weak nor strong. But the mouth was pure weakness. And as he knew, only weak, uncertain men required affectations.

  Sartene leaned forward in his chair, clasping his hands in front of him. His eyes were as hard as their color. “I appreciate your compliments to my home, and my land and my agricultural plans,” he said. “But before we discuss those things further I’d like to talk about our business together.”

  The abrupt dismissal of his ivy-league niceties threw Baker off stride. “Certainly,” he said, offering a weak smile and fondling his club tie. “Actually,” he went on, “I’m really just here to affirm Matt’s previous conversation with you.” He nodded toward Bently as if indicating he would continue from there. Bently remained silent.

  “What do you know about these people, the Meo, that might help us do what you ask?” Sartene’s eyes had remained on Baker, hard and unrelenting; his voice, in contrast, was soft and even.

  Baker continued to fondle h
is tie. It was dark blue with a pattern of white “Y’s.” “Well, they’re a bit primitive,” Baker said, uncertain of his ground. “What we really want to do is make them see they’re better off doing business with our friends, rather than the other side. We thought we’d leave the methods up to you, actually.”

  Sartene sat back in his chair, still staring at the American diplomat. “Methods vary, just as people do,” he said.

  Baker extended his hands, palms up, at his sides and smiled.

  Bently drew a deep breath. “I think my office can give you some help in that area, although I can’t guarantee the complete accuracy of our information,” Bently said. “A good deal of it comes from French intelligence gathered prior to the war.”

  Sartene placed the fingers of one hand against his mouth, then tipped the fingers toward Bently, indicating he would listen to whatever he knew.

  “Baker’s right to a certain degree,” Bently began. “The Meo are primitive by our standards. But at the same time they have a strong sense of their own history and customs, and their sense of loyalty to others only lasts as long as they see advantage in it. The tribes are divided into what they call ‘little kingdoms,’ each with their own aristocracy and hereditary leaders, whom they call ‘little kings.’”

  “The kaitongs,” Sartene said.

  Bently suppressed a smile, knowing now that he was offering Sartene no new information. He was merely being allowed to compare knowledge. Being tested, really. “Precisely,” he said.

  A gust of hot wind came off the river and cut across the veranda. Behind Sartene an eight-foot khoai-sap plant swayed wildly at the edge of the Japanese garden, its massive leaves, shaped like elephant ears, banging together in dull slaps.

  Sartene watched Bently’s eyes narrow and move with the sound. Baker appeared to hear nothing.

  “There are two major clans, each with their own kaitong, at present,” Bently said, returning his attention to their host. “The Ly clan, now headed by Touby Lyfoung, and the Lo clan, which has Lo Faydang as its little king. Faydang is actually Touby’s uncle, but the two clans, though never waging war on each other, have been enemies since the early twenties. Faydang’s older sister, May, married Touby’s father, Ly Foung. He was considered a brilliant man by Meo standards. Quite powerful and quite ruthless. Apparently that ruthlessness involved his wife as well. Four years into their marriage, after giving birth to two sons, she committed suicide by eating a fatal amount of opium. Her father, Lo Bliayao, who was then kaitong of the Lo clan, immediately banned the Lys from his territory. It’s a rift that’s never been mended, even though all those directly involved are long dead.”