The Corsican (24 page)

“I'll be leaving here soon,” he said.

“What?” She seemed to come back from a distance, drawn back by the statement that came without any preamble. “You're leaving?”

“It's time to go back home,” he said. “It's long overdue, actually.”

“I'm sorry to hear that, Matt. And Pierre will be heartbroken. He's become so fond of you.”

He smiled, wishing she had said she would be heartbroken, not the boy.

“What will you do there?” she asked.

“Back to work in my father's bank, I suppose.”

“In that city that is spelled like my son's name, but pronounced
pier?
”

She smiled at him, enjoying her small joke, but the smile was so electrifying he could only nod his head.

“Why is it that the sons of powerful men always have to work for their fathers?” she asked.

There had been a note of personal bitterness in her voice, almost imperceptible, but there. “You mean like Jean?” he asked.

“Or you,” she said.

“Perhaps we just want to please them. Or maybe we're looking for the easy way for ourselves. It's not a bad thing, you know. Your husband has grown into quite a man these past few years. I've watched him. He's much stronger than he was when I first met him. Stronger in the ways that are important, I mean.”

“Yes, I know,” she said. Her mind seemed to drift again, and then suddenly she seemed to snap back. “Do you think he's happy in what he does?”

“That's hard to tell, Madeleine. I'm not sure I even know what being happy in what one does really means. I've done a great many things these last years that haven't made me happy.”

“Then why did you do them?”

“I guess I felt they had to be done, were necessary. We're all taught to do that, you know. You remained up to say goodnight to your guests, even though they really weren't your guests. They wouldn't have noticed. Maybe Francesco, but certainly not the orientals. But you've been taught to do it.”

“I suppose,” she said absently. Her eyes hit him squarely again. “Do you trust Francesco, Matt?”

“Why do you ask? I really don't know the man that well. My dealings with your family over the years have been mostly with Jean and Buonaparte. Sometimes Auguste and Benito, but almost never Francesco.”

She shook her head. “It doesn't matter,” she said. “There's just something about him that's always frightened me.”

“That's not hard to understand, especially when he starts playing with that knife of his. He's a hard man, as we'd say in the army.”

He watched her. Her mind seemed to move in and out of their conversation, drifting to her own concerns, then returning to what she was actually saying. He wished he could make her concentrate on him. Just this once.

“It's not that kind of fear I mean. It's almost as though he knows something no one else does, and that knowledge gives him a kind of power over the people he deals with. Buonaparte has that same sense about him. Don't misunderstand. I love my father-in-law. I know he wants only good for us. But he has that …” She hesitated, struggling for the right word, then giving up. “That
thing
about him. I don't know how to explain it. It's just something you can feel.”

Bently knew what she meant. He had known military commanders like that. Men whose mere presence reassured their troops. Men who could stand knee-deep in bodies and make the survivors proud of what they had just gone through, instead of merely disgusted by the waste and senselessness of it all. He didn't know what you called that quality. He just knew that some men had it. He also knew that he did not.

“I'm going to miss you … all,” he said.

She smiled again. That same electric smile. “I envy you, Matt. I wish we were going with you.”

Sartene's face was as dark and cold as his eyes. His chest rose and fell rapidly, and he seemed ready to leap out violently at his son.

“It would be for the best, Papa,” Jean said.

“What are you talking about, ‘for the best'?” He mocked the words, his lips twisted as though they were something foul in his mouth. “All my life I've done what was best for my family. Now you come and tell me what we've done here is shit. That you want to take your son away.”

“Papa, I didn't say that. I said the boy needs schooling. I said we could all go. What more can we get from this place?”

“Get. Get. All you can think of is
get
. There's more to life than just taking for yourself. A man builds, he doesn't just take nourishment. An animal does that.”

He began to pace his study, then turned and jabbed a finger toward his son. “I thought you could succeed me, that you could take what we have here and build on it.” He threw his hand aside in disgust. “I don't mean opium, I don't mean smuggled gold, or any of the things we had to do to be strong. All that will pass for us. They're a means to an end. We have a rubber plantation that is growing all around us. We have hotels and restaurants and bars.” He closed his hands into a fist and held it before him. “We have political power, not just here, but in Europe, in Hong Kong. When the Americans take over here, which will happen, we'll have power with them too. Roads will be built here. Goods, legal goods, will be exported. We'll have a part of that. Not me. You. And even more important, Pierre.”

“Papa, with the money we have, we can get anything we want. Anywhere.” Jean's voice was soft, pleading, yet firm in its conviction.

“What?” Sartene spat out. “We can be
padrones
. We can sit in a fine house and drive fine automobiles, and produce nothing, leave nothing behind. You make me sick with that talk. What kind of man do you want your son to be? Some soft little fool, like that American who visited us from the embassy? Where do you get these ideas? I didn't raise you to think like this.”

“Papa. The boy needs education. At the schools here they spit on him.”

“So he spits back!” Sartene shouted the words, something rare for him. He caught hold of himself and took several deep breaths. “He can learn here,” he said softly. “If we were in danger here, then it would be different. When you were a boy I sent you to Corsica because there was danger. It tore my heart to send you and your mother away.” He shook his head. “I know you don't want to be away from your son. That's only natural. But he can learn here. We can teach him more than any school. And the
lycée
in Vientiane is not that bad. I can talk to the parents of these French children. They won't want to offend me.”

“Those people can't control what their children say and do,” Jean said.

Sartene turned his back, so he was facing the high mahogany mantel that dominated the middle of one wall. He placed his hands on the mantel and leaned forward. He was tired of fighting. Tired of arguing against the logic of his son's words. Logic at least where Pierre was concerned. But the education Pierre needed was more than just the knowledge from books, he told himself. And Pierre could not get that away from here, away from him.

Jean came up behind him and placed a hand on his shoulder. “Papa. I didn't want to make you angry. And I don't want to take Pierre away from you. I know how much you love him. How much you want for him. We have plenty of time. More than a year. We'll find a way to work it out.”

Sartene could feel the anger tighten his stomach and chest. He breathed deeply, struggling to calm himself. But when he spoke his voice was cold. Colder than he intended.

“You have something important to do tomorrow. That's what you should be thinking about now. The future of our group depends on it. And I expect you to do it well.”

Jean allowed his hand to drop from his father's shoulder. He stood there for a moment, staring at his back, then turned and walked slowly out of the room.

It was a small, seedy bar in the red-light district of Vientiane. The bar was owned by a Laotian, who paid tribute to the Sartene
milieu
, but the bar was never frequented by the Corsicans who worked for Sartene.

Even in the early-morning hours the Laotian whores scattered along the bar eyed each prospective customer as he entered. The smoke from dozens of cigarettes was thick and hung near the ceiling like wispy clouds, reflecting the colored lights that flashed from the Wurlitzer jukebox that occupied one corner of the room.

Francesco Canterina and the two men from Saigon sat in a rear booth, the front of which was covered by a beaded curtain. The men were Corsicans. Carbone's men. They had been in the city for five days, hidden in a cheap hotel near the bar, awaiting word from Francesco.

One of the Corsicans had the thick body and flat face of a peasant. He was young, in his late twenties, but he was already losing his hair, and it made him seem older. The second man was small and wiry, and his face seemed to come to a sharp edge along the line of his nose, giving his head the shape of a hatchet. They spoke quietly in Corsican, the hatchet-faced man glancing repeatedly toward the entrance of the bar.

“You sure he doesn't suspect anything?” the large man said.

Francesco smiled coldly at him. “Nothing. If he did, I'd be floating down the Mekong right now, food for the crocodiles. He's an old man, past his time, like I told you. All he wants to do now is play with his grandson. Meanwhile our
milieu
suffers. It'll be a kindness to him to put him out of his misery.”

“And his son will be taken care of too?” the smaller man asked. “I've heard about him, and I don't want him looking me up later.”

“That I do myself,” Francesco said. Bently flashed through his mind. He hadn't anticipated his presence. It would require some diversion, something unexpected.

The large man rubbed his massive chin, which already showed the dark stubble of his returning beard. “I'm not sure of the airport,” he said. “It's very open.”

“He and Auguste Pavlovi will go there to meet Auguste's brother, Benito. His plane is due in at four-thirty in the afternoon, and Buonaparte always goes to meet him. They're very close, these three old men. The Mua bodyguards will stay in the car. Buonaparte doesn't like to attract attention by taking them inside with him. It's the one place he's most vulnerable. And the time is right. By that time his son will be dead.” Francesco shrugged, confirming the logic of what he had said.

“What about these other two?” the smaller man asked.

“They're like him. They're old and their minds have gone soft.”

“Will they have guns?” The smaller man was still pressing.

“Of course,” Francesco snapped. “Listen, I didn't tell you I wanted you to take three old nuns. They'll have pistols, that's all. The Mua guards will have heavy weapons, but they'll be in the car. You take them inside.” He snapped his fingers three times. “Just like that. You're making it sound like I'm asking you to fight some fucking army, instead of three old men.”

“Look,” the big man said. “Carbone told us no mistakes. We're just being careful.”

Francesco looked at each man in turn. Carbone, the ass, couldn't have picked two more likely assassins. Two hard young Corsicans, dressed in rumpled cord suits. Sartene and the others would recognize them immediately for what they were. “You won't have to worry about anything,” he said. “There's a lounge in the airport. You'll both be sitting there, reading newspapers. They'll have to walk right past you, but I don't even want you to look at them. Keep your faces covered with the papers.”

The large man threw his hands up in a gesture of disbelief. “How are we supposed to see them?”

“You won't have to, until just before you shoot.” He grinned at his own cleverness. “There's a Mua who works at my house in Vientiane. He'll come rushing up, calling Sartene by name, just as they reach you. Then you drop the papers and they're right in front of you.”

The two Corsicans exchanged glances. The larger one nodded appreciatively.

“He's really gotten that careless?” the smaller man asked.

Francesco raised his eyebrows in a what-can-you-expect gesture.

“I'm not really surprised,” the smaller man said. “Power makes men overconfident. Don Carbone does the same thing. Sometimes I think he's also getting too old for this kind of life.”

Francesco laughed. “It happens to us all,” he said. “Let's have another drink. We'll drink to youth, and to tomorrow.” He extended his hand through the beaded curtain and snapped his fingers for the waiter. He would buy each of these men a whore tonight, he decided. He wanted them to be content. Especially the one who thought Carbone was getting old.

Chapter 15

Jean Sartene swung the small observation plane in a wide arc prior to landing at Phong Savan. With each turn he and Bently studied the forest below, looking for any sign that a hostile force might be lying in wait. The jungle was still, a hundred different shades of green reflecting the early-morning light. The plane passed over the village of Lat Houang with its scattering of hootches, children playing in the dusty soil, old men squatting in the shade, buffalo standing idle, some already hitched to wooden-wheeled carts.

There was no one working the steep hillsides where the poppies were grown. The plants that remained from the previous crop where now scorched and brown and almost hidden by new growth waiting to be replaced by the new plantings that would be sown in late March, only weeks before the rainy season began. Looking out the window, Bently remembered the first planting he had witnessed, the primitive slash-and-bum agriculture common to all of Southeast Asia.

It had been a hot, dusty morning, just as it was now. The men, women and children of the village had gathered at the bottom of a wide, steep hill. For weeks, men of the village had been cutting the forest growth that covered the hill with single-bitted axes. The fallen trees and soft vegetation were now dry and brittle. Slowly the men of the village climbed the hill. At the top they lit torches, then turned and raced wildly down the hill, dragging the torches behind them. Flames shot hundreds of feet into the air, literally chasing them down the hillside, and within hours the billowing smoke rose two miles above the fields.