“Salut, chef,” Isabelle greeted the brigadier and warmly shook the hand of J-J, her boss before she had been promoted to the minister’s staff in Paris. Bruno knew she was in Bordeaux. He was not entirely surprised that she was there to check security for her boss. But he still felt that sudden, familiar jolt at the sight of her. She gave him a brisk smile and a friendly “Bruno, ca va?” before she gestured to them to move quickly inside the back door to Tran’s restaurant. She was holding an automatic pistol down by her thigh.
Behind her, Tran waited beside the door, two burly security men flanking him. To Bruno’s eyes, he hadn’t changed much since Sarajevo, still tall and pencil thin and looking completely French until his face broke into a wide smile at the sight of his old comrade-in-arms, and as the eyes narrowed the Asian genes shone through.
“Bruno, it’s been too long,” Tran said, hugging him as Isabelle fretted to get them indoors. The two men broke off their embrace and, arms around each other’s shoulders, tried to squeeze through the narrow doorway.
“The place is secure,” Isabelle said once they were all in the cramped hall and the door closed behind them. There was barely room for one person to pass at a time with the stack of cases of soft drinks and beer piled against the grimy wall. On top of them, Bruno noted with appreciation, stood four shiny new industrial-sized fire extinguishers, a precaution against further gasoline bombs, he suspected. Two poker-faced Vietnamese stood by a door at the far end of the passage that led to a kitchen. Steam and cooking smells and the sound of clanging pots leaked from the opening.
“We had the dogs in earlier to check for explosives,” she said. “The Viets have their own security upstairs and next door and in the kitchen. Tran here is the liaison for that. The entrance to the restaurant is at the front of the building on the next street, but it’s been closed for the evening, and we have another unmarked car outside.”
“Who are these two?” asked the brigadier, looking at the two burly security men who stood by the door.
“Fusiliers Marins from the naval base at Lorient,” she said. “The same unit we’ll be using for the mission. I’ve been training with them.” The brigadier nodded, and Bruno was impressed. What mission? The marine commandos were the elite of French special forces. Knowing that she was liaising with the British navy on a joint operation against illegal immigrants, he was now pretty sure it would involve boarding a ship at sea.
“Is there a specific reason for all this security?” the brigadier asked.
“The Viets insisted on coming armed,” she said, shrugging. “But there are no threats on our radar.”
“The meeting will be upstairs in the banquet room,” said Tran, leading the way up a narrow staircase. The brigadier followed him, and Isabelle hung back, insisting on taking the rear, her gun still in her hand. It was all turning out very differently from the amicable reunion of old soldiers that Bruno had expected.
The banquet room occupied the full width of two houses, and with its dark wood paneling, louvered shutters and dragon lamps it looked as if it had been imported direct from one of the old French colonial mansions in Hanoi. The big oval table and chairs were in heavily carved rosewood, and places were set for eight people. Three Vietnamese men were already seated, and the first of them to rise was Vinh. He greeted Bruno with an apologetic grin. The second Vietnamese bowed and came around the table to shake hands with the new arrivals. He was in early middle age, as tall as Bruno, and looked as tough as the two marine commandos downstairs. The last of the Vietnamese remained seated, smoking a kretek cigarette held between thumb and forefinger. It filled the room with the scent of cloves. His hair was white, and the veins on the back of his hands were thick and twisted, making his age much greater than his almost unlined face suggested. A bottle of Remy Martin stood before him.
“A pleasure to see you again, Vien,” said the brigadier, leaning across the table to shake the hand of the still-seated old man. “Let us hope our discussions this evening can prove as fruitful as they were in Marseilles.”
The old man nodded and studied J-J and Bruno with a piercing eye. Bruno had absorbed enough of the history of the Binh Xuyen to know that “Vien” was the honorary title of the sect’s leader. The post was named after the legendary Le Van Vien, who had risen from being an illiterate river pirate to control the city of Saigon as police chief, army general and drug lord.
“How’s your wife?” Bruno asked Vinh. “I haven’t seen either of you since the attack in the market. We’ve been worried about you.”
“She is recovered, and we are very grateful,” Vinh said, rising from a deep bow with his eyes downcast and glancing across to the seated Vien as if for approval. All the Vietnamese seemed to defer to Vien. “Perhaps we’ll come back one day. Tran told me you took care of our house when those Fujian animals put rats inside.”
“It’s still quite a mess,” Bruno said. He turned to the tough-looking Vietnamese and held out his hand.
“Bruno Courreges, chief of police of St. Denis,” he said. “And you are?”
Almost reluctantly, the Vietnamese returned Bruno’s handshake and murmured, “Bao Le.” The edge of his hand and the knuckles were thick with calluses Bruno could feel in the handshake. The only other hand he had shaken like that had belonged to an army karate champion.
“From Paris?” Bruno asked amiably.
“Sometimes,” Bao Le replied. “My family is from Hue.”
The elderly Vietnamese muttered an aside to Tran, who opened the ornately carved door of a low sideboard and brought out a bottle of Macallan.
“Please, our honored guests will sit and take some refreshment before we dine. I know the general likes his Scottish drink, and there is also champagne,” said Vien, gesturing to a tall silver chalice on the sideboard in which two bottles of Dom Perignon were chilling. At each of the places set for dinner were glasses for champagne, white wine, red wine, dessert wine and cognac, alongside thick crystal tumblers for the scotch. Bruno exchanged glances with Isabelle at the door, who gave him the merest ghost of a wink.
Vien put down his smoldering cigarette, opened the bottle of Macallan and poured a large tumbler for the brigadier. Tran’s eyes rose, as if this act of Vien pouring a drink for someone with his own hands was an extraordinary honor. Bruno felt adrift, as if in a strange country where the laws and customs were wholly foreign to him.
“You see, I remember. No ice,” Vien said to the brigadier, and then clinked his cognac glass against the tumbler. “Chin-chin,” he said, and Bruno fought to suppress a smile.
Tran steered Bruno and J-J to the chairs on either side of the brigadier and then began pouring champagne. Isabelle declined a seat and remained standing by the door, her gun now in a shoulder holster beneath her loosely cut jacket. Bao Le, Bruno noted, was drinking water.
“You are Sergeant Bruno, who defended my friend Vinh and his wife when you were dressed as le Pere Noel,” said Vien. “We are most grateful, and I would like you to take a drink with me. But first let me convey our condolences for the death of your friend Hercule Vendrot. We mourn with you. He was a great friend to our people, a fine Frenchman and a good man. I knew him for over fifty years, and I shall miss him.”
He put one hand on the table to help push himself slowly to his feet and raised his cognac glass to Bruno, who stood and raised his glass in return. All the Vietnamese were now standing, and the brigadier joined them. The last man still seated, J-J grabbed a glass and hastily got to his feet.
“Hercule Vendrot, in respectful memory,” said the old Vietnamese, and drank his glass to the end. He refilled it and then leaned across to clink his glass against Bruno’s champagne.
“We never forget those friends who fight for us,” he said, putting his hand on the table once more for support as he sat down. He looked at the brigadier. “We have been under attack again, but only now do you seek me out. You have left it late, monsieur.”
“Like you, we were taken by surprise by these latest attacks. We’r
e trying to establish whether this is something local that blew up and got out of hand or whether the treizieme is behind it, in which case they’d be breaking the truce.”
“The treizieme is always behind it, but they’ll lie through their teeth when they talk to you French. They’re just giving the Fujian Dragons their head, letting them act as scouts to see how much we resist,” Vien said. “Where is Savani? Is he not with you?”
“If we can organize a meeting with the treizieme, Savani will come for that. He sends you his respects, but said that he’d want to know his Binh Xuyen friends sought his help before he intervened. I saw him today, but he is back in Corsica by now.”
Vien grunted and waved a hand at Tran, who went across to a dumbwaiter in the wall and began pulling out plates of Vietnamese delicacies, banh bao fern cakes, nem lui pork dumplings rolled as thinly as a cigarette, and banh bot loc tom smelling of fish sauce and sugared vinegar.
“These are my favorites,” Vien said, pushing a plate of sticky rice and baby shrimp toward Bruno. “ Banh ram it, from my mother’s hometown of Hue.”
“A lot of this is new to me,” said Bruno. “What’s this treizieme you mention?”
“It’s slang for the main triad council, from the treizieme arrondissement in Paris,” the brigadier explained. “Sometimes they claim a loose authority over all the triad groups; sometimes they deny having any influence. This time they claim this outbreak has nothing to do with them.”
“The Chinese are fighting among themselves, you know that,” said Vien. “They blame us for these bombings when they’re doing it to themselves.”
“You trying to tell me that you aren’t defending yourselves?” the brigadier asked.
“Do we have a choice?” countered Vien. “But defending is one thing. Attacking, using gasoline bombs, that’s something else.”
Vien smiled and poured the brigadier more whiskey. Bruno glanced at Vinh, who kept his eyes downcast and sat with his chair some distance from the table, as if he were not really part of this.
Bruno looked around the table, confused. The two Vietnamese that he knew, Vinh and Tran, were law-abiding small businessmen, and yet this discussion seemed predicated on the assumption that a war was under way between two rival groups of organized crime. Any intervention he made would probably be unwelcome, but so be it. This meeting had only taken place because he’d gotten in touch with Tran, and now it seemed to be another kind of meeting altogether. He cleared his throat.
“When you talk about defending their turf, I think we might be missing the point,” he said to the brigadier. “You’re probably thinking of the big picture, but I only see the small one, and that’s Vinh here, who has no more to do with organized crime than the man on the moon. He sells nems, not drugs. He doesn’t run whores or protection rackets. Believe me, I’d know if he did. The Vinhs work hard, pay their taxes and are respected neighbors. They’re entitled to our protection. Protection by the French police, not by some shadowy organization called the Binh Xuyen.”
Vinh raised his eyes to Bruno’s and nodded his head very firmly, just once. Bruno looked across at Tran, seeing something of the young soldier he had known in Bosnia. Why on earth was he playing some kind of scene from The Godfather, a Mafia boss surrounded by his underlings?
“Tran, you run a restaurant, and you’re no crook. Can you explain to me what’s going on here?”
Tran looked nervously at Vien, who was smiling indulgently at Bruno. “Go ahead, Tran, explain it to your friend,” the old man said.
Tran shrugged. “It’s tradition. We turn to our own for protection. And to be frank, we haven’t had much help from the French authorities over the years.” Tran looked across at Vinh, whose eyes were looking down at the table once more. “When Vinh and his wife were attacked, they turned to the one organization they could count on, the Binh Xuyen. But you’re right about one thing. We aren’t gangsters anymore. Only the very old men remember what the Binh Xuyen used to be back in Saigon under French rule. I haven’t handled a gun since I left the army, not until this week when I felt the need to get one for protection against these Chinese bastards. And where did I have to turn to get one? To the Binh Xuyen. It’s the only organization we’ve got. But it’s not what it was. It can’t defend us. The best it can do is help us defend ourselves, and maybe get to sit at a table with people from Paris and ask just what we get for our taxes.”
“So who’s running the Burmese heroin into Marseilles, if not the Binh Xuyen?” the brigadier asked.
“I don’t know anything about Marseilles, just like I don’t know anything about heroin or opium or the old days,” said Tran angrily. “This is Bordeaux and Aquitaine, where we run restaurants and market stalls and teach school and work in banks.”
“And sometimes help run boatloads of illegal immigrants,” the brigadier said drily.
“One moment,” came a new voice. For the first time Bao Le spoke, and Bruno was struck by the way the other Vietnamese, even the elderly Vinh, turned attentively, even respectfully, toward him.
“I wouldn’t wish our French friends to get the impression that the Binh Xuyen is primarily an organization involved in illegal pursuits,” he said in a voice of great authority. “Historically, that was the case. But now here in France the Binh Xuyen has evolved over the decades since so many of us were driven into exile. It’s a leading part of our community, a support network, even a welfare system. And of course it has the means and the will to defend us when we are attacked. That is why I am here, to show my family’s support.”
Bao Le looked around the table, holding each gaze for a moment before moving to the next, and Bruno noted that the other Vietnamese bowed their heads in respect. What had Bao Le meant by referring to his family? No sooner had he asked himself the question than the answer came to him. The Vietnamese family name always came first, so Bao Le came from the same royal family as Bao Dai, the last king of Vietnam under the French until the Americans installed the republic under President Diem in 1955. Bruno looked at the young man more closely, pondering the combination of royalty with the hands of a karate champion.
The brigadier looked across the table at Vien, who was slowly sipping his cognac. “You can still put a hundred gunmen on the streets of Marseilles if you have to.”
“So why aren’t the Chinese going after the gunmen in Marseilles with the drugs and money?” asked Bruno. “Why are they going after little men in villages, like Vinh in St. Denis and the Duongs in Ste. Alvere? I don’t understand this.”
Bruno stopped at the sound of a spoon tapping firmly against a cognac glass.
“Our young friend from St. Denis is at least asking the right question,” said Vien, putting the spoon down. “The answer is simple. There are too many Chinese. They are coming in such numbers that there would never be enough jobs for them in the milieu, even if they took over all the narcotics trade in Europe. They bring in the illegals by the boatload, and then they have to find them work. They want the restaurants, the market stalls, the hairdressers, the supermarkets, because the real problem the treizieme has to face is economics. It’s all driven by numbers.”
“So even if you can arrange another truce now with the treizieme, it won’t last. Is that what you’re saying?” Bruno asked.
“I suppose it is,” said Vien. “That doesn’t mean a truce that lasts even for a few years won’t be worthwhile, if our old friend here can help us achieve that.” He nodded at the brigadier.
“If I may contribute something,” said Isabelle from the door. “If numbers are the problem, the priority must be to stop the illegal immigration. That’s our job. But it might also be where you Viets may be able to help us.”
“You want us to act as your spies?” asked Vien, his voice icy. Tran made as if to speak but then with a visible effort clamped his mouth shut. Vinh drew in his breath in a long, worried hiss.
“That’s one way to put it,” said the brigadier. “Another way would be to say that the inspector has just defined a
n important area of common interest between us.”
“I agree with that,” said Bao Le quietly.
Vien nodded slowly in acknowledgment and lit another kretek cigarette, his eyes half closed. After a long pause, he turned to Tran, who was almost quivering to control some emotion. Bruno guessed it was impatience.
“This might be an excellent moment to serve dinner,” Vien said.
“Not until you give them an answer to what impresses me as an excellent suggestion,” said Tran, the words almost exploding from his mouth as he ignored the menacing look the old man was giving him. “I respect you as an elder and as an old friend of my father,” Tran went on urgently. “But my father has passed on and I’m part of another generation, which has no interest in whatever the Binh Xuyen may do in Marseilles. My interest is in making sure that I don’t have to carry a gun or worry about a bomb hitting my restaurant or seeing one of my kids kidnapped.”
“This is not a decision I should take alone. There are others to be consulted,” Vien said, turning to give a polite nod of his head to Bao Le. “But I understand the importance of cooperation with the French authorities. In fact, I came to this meeting prepared to share some information that they should find useful.”
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