The Corsican

by William Heffernan

  Pierre left the dog and walked toward them, with what Bently considered a great deal of forced dignity for a little squirt in short pants. The child stopped in front of him and extended his hand.

  “Good day, sir,” he said in English.

  “You speak English very well,” Bently said.

  “It is something we feel is important,” Sartene said. “Something that always served me well. Little Pierre speaks our own language, of course, along with French and English. Gradually he’s learning the languages of this area.” His voice had a teasing reprimand in it, as though the boy had not been studying the new languages as hard as he should.

  “I’m very impressed, Pierre,” Bently said, still looking down at the child.

  “Thank you, sir,” he said. He had ignored the gentle reprimand.

  There was a bit of the old man in him, Bently thought. And a lot of the mother. He ran his hand over the boy’s silky blond hair. “That’s some dog you have,” he said, gesturing toward the Weimaraner with his chin. “We have a lot of hunting dogs where I come from in America, but not many are as handsome as he is.”

  “He can catch snakes,” the boy said, acting like a child for the first time.

  “I’ll bet he can,” Bently said.

  “Oh, the snakes,” Madeleine said. “I forgot, Papa.”

  Bently turned to the sound of the woman’s lilting voice, realizing even the sound was exciting to him.

  She looked away from Sartene and spoke to Bently. “I’m afraid I’m supposed to take the dog with us when we walk. But as usual, I forgot. Are you very annoyed with me, Papa?”

  There was a teasing quality to her voice. She used her beauty even on Sartene, Bently noticed, And it left him defenseless, as it would any man.

  “It’s here now,” Sartene said. “Besides, the boy enjoys the dog.”

  She smiled, realizing he was defending his protectiveness. “Do you have children, Monsieur Bently?” she asked, turning to the American.

  “Please, call me Matt,” he said. “And no. I’m afraid I never married.”

  “That’s too bad,” she said. “They can be a joy. And so can their grandfathers,” she said, offering a smile to Sartene.

  Sartene shook his head. “Perhaps we should go back to the shade now,” he said. “It’s very hot.”

  She laughed. A beautiful laugh, Bently thought.

  “Yes, Papa,” she said, taking his arm.

  They walked slowly across the open plain, the boy and dog running far ahead, Bently trying awkwardly to make casual conversation.

  In the distance he could see Malcolm Baker and Benito with the others on the veranda. From the way Baker sat in his chair, Bently could tell he was exhausted. He would undoubtedly bitch about it the entire way back. He sincerely hoped Baker would become ill during the flight.

  Chapter 8

  When the Manchu dynasty began an extermination campaign against China’s rebellious Meo tribes in 1856, the numerous Meo clans fled south by the thousands. The majority of the Meo burst into northern Viet Nam’s Tonkin Delta like an invasion of locusts, only to be driven back into the Vietnamese highlands by the Vietnamese army’s elephant battalions.

  Three Meo kaitong escaped that disaster by fleeing China’s Yunnan and Szechwan provinces and turning southwest for the Nong Het district of northern Laos. The three clans, the Lo and the Ly—who would later struggle for dominance of opium—and the warlike Mua, lived, at first, in relative harmony. Throughout the latter half of the nineteenth century the Mua were clearly dominant, primarily because of their reputation as the fiercest of Meo warriors. But it was a dominance that would not last. Led by kaitong who were militarily strong but politically weak, the Mua were pushed aside by the Lo and Ly clans at the turn of the century, so much so that they fell into relative obscurity.

  Offered little more than a beggar’s role among the stronger clans, the young warriors of the Mua drifted throughout Laos, offering their skills to those who needed them, often as not ending up as free-lance mercenaries for the French.

  It was the Mua whom Buonaparte Sartene employed, and it was they who taught him their history and the intricacies of tribal customs. From him they received respect and honor, and in return Sartene enjoyed the fierce loyalty of a forgotten clan, which gradually grew in number as Mua scattered throughout Laos learned they had at last found a unifying force.

  Sartene recognized, and as a Corsican understood, the feelings of a people who had been denied their birthright, and it was something he used to the ultimate. When the Mua were told of the coming attack on Prince Phetsarath, and the subsequent move into Nong Het to seize control of the Ly opium dynasty and to drive the Lo clan from the region, they knew they had at last found a kaitong worthy of leadership. It did not matter that he was a European.

  The raid on Prince Phetsarath’s ancestral home was executed with brutal force. Located on the banks of the Mekong outside Luang Prabang, the attack came from the river under the cover of the predawn mist. Francesco Canterina, who led the assault, had been told by Sartene to avoid a bloodbath if possible. It was an order Francesco chose to ignore, and only the prince and a few servants were allowed to escape the brutality of the Mua onslaught.

  Seated in the prince’s ornate study, surrounded by a priceless collection of Chinese and Laotian art, Francesco knew he would have little trouble explaining away the unavoidable need for violence. He had little respect for life, especially oriental life, and he knew the Mua, pleased with the vengeful bloodletting they had been allowed to enjoy, would never contradict him. Besides, Sartene’s interest in limiting violence was self-serving, intended to allow him to consolidate his power in the future among both the victors and the vanquished. It was something that did not fit into Francesco’s plan, the execution of which was still years distant. Like Sartene, Francesco Canterina understood the value of patience, and the need to plan quietly for the future.

  But today he was not in a patient mood. He was murderously angry. He had been used, was being used and would continue to be used to help establish Sartene’s son, Jean, as the milieu’s leader in this new opium business. Jean was being groomed to succeed his father. And that being the case, he, Francesco Canterina, was being pushed aside.

  Francesco leaned back in the delicate, gilded chair that dominated the center of the study like some imperial throne and studied the collection of Ming vases that littered the room, deciding which he would take with him as prizes of combat, and which lesser pieces he might bring back to Sartene as a gesture of respect. It was fitting. He had not personally shared in the wealth that had been found in that French farmhouse years ago. No one had. Not even Auguste, who had been there. Francesco grunted, thinking of it now. Payment in return for his life. The gesture of a fool. Sartene had said then that the money belonged to the new milieu they would form and as such would be enjoyed equally. But he had become the head of that milieu, and that wealth had helped his power to grow until now, without question, he was paceri of the region, the biggest of the big, who now with the move into opium would become even more powerful. And after him, his dull-witted son.

  Above all others Francesco despised Jean most of all. Jean had never proved himself in his youth, had never been required to do so. Still he had everything he, Francesco, wanted. And one thing more. That woman, that wife, that Madeleine. Francesco wanted her as well. That Frenchwoman, whose father had been a shopkeeper, but who carried herself like some rich bitch, like the daughter of some baron. He would teach her someday as she lay beneath him. He could tell she wanted him to, even though she ignored him. There was always that slight look of fear when their eyes met, that sense of discomfort in his presence. Yes, she wanted it as much as he did. He smiled to himself, wondering if she ever thought of him when she was making love to that brute of a husband. Absentmindedly he took his knife from his pocket and pressed the small lever that sent the stiletto blade shooting up through the shaft. He held the knife loosely in his hand, allowing his thumb to alte
rnately feel the sharp edges on each side of the long, slender blade.

  The time will come, he told himself. Years from now. But it will come. And with it everything I want. Everything.

  The door to the study swung open and two of the Mua pushed a trembling guard into the room. Francesco returned the knife to his pocket and sneered at the cowering little man, who stood now with a rope tied around his neck, the end of it held firmly by one of the Mua.

  They were like bugs on the ground, all of these people. Slowly he lit a cigarette, keeping his eyes on the guard. He was dressed in the uniform of the prince’s household, a bright, brocaded jacket that went to mid-thigh, plain baggy black trousers and brocaded slippers. He looked like some ethnic doll sold in the shops of Vientiane. The only difference was that he was trembling with fear.

  Francesco exhaled a shaft of smoke toward the small, middle-aged man. “You will take a message from us to Lo Faydang. Do you know where his village is?” he asked in formal but broken Lao.

  The guard nodded, afraid even to speak. The fear made Francesco smile.

  “If you do not do as I say, you will be killed,” he added, watching the trembling intensify. He stood, allowing his greater size to tower over the guard. “I’ll know if you fail to do this,” he added, waiting to let the threat settle in the mind of this bug. “I want you to tell him what happened here. And I want you to tell him that he is next, unless he follows your brave prince and runs like a frightened dog. Also tell him be can never return. Do you understand?”

  The small guard nodded his head, still afraid to speak.

  Francesco turned to one of the Mua, the one holding the rope. “Take him outside and after he sees us set the house on fire, put him on the road that leads to the hill country,” he said. He beckoned the other Mua to him, as the first jerked the rope harshly and pulled the guard from the room.

  He smiled at the remaining Mua, bowing his head slightly as a gesture of respect for their part in the victory. “You will follow this guard,” he said. “Be sure he does as he was told. If he tries to run, you take him to the edge of Faydang’s village. Later, after he delivers the message, find him alone and kill him. Then join your people at Lyfoung’s village.”

  The Mua bowed and left the room. Francesco returned to his chair. The first part of the instructions to the Mua warrior had been Sartene’s. The second had been his own. He wanted to be sure that in years to come this guard would not be able to identify him as the one who had led the raid on the prince’s home. He smiled to himself. You’re a clever man, Buonaparte. But so am I, he told himself.

  He looked about the study one last time. It was too bad they would burn the house to the ground. It was a house worthy of an important man, like Carbone’s house in Saigon, only bigger still. He walked to the window and looked out. The grounds were beautiful too, sculptured and cared for in a way that emphasized the importance of the man who owned them. He had not understood the Japanese garden that Sartene had included in his new house, but now he thought he did. Things should emphasize the power and the importance of a man. It was necessary.

  He turned, his back to the window, and looked about the room again. A long road from the hard seacoast village where he was born. Longer still from the docks and narrow back streets of the Corsican ghetto of Marseille and the filthy French prisons. He drew a deep breath. In a way he missed those streets and the teeming docks. He thought of the massive Cathédrale de la Major that looked out into the Joliette Ship Basin, only four hundred yards from that place on the Rue de la République where, at eighteen, he had killed his first man. The whores on the Rue Colbert, and the ones who worked the Boul’ Charles Livon on the Quai de Rive Neuve, across the old port where the City Hall watched them without concern. His mother had been one of those whores, forced into that life by the French. Frenchmen like that first man he had killed, one of his mother’s customers. He would go back one day, he told himself. But not for many years. Not until he had what he wanted. Not until he had all of it.

  Chapter 9

  The unmarked, hulking, gray C-47 transport slowly circled the Plain of Jars as it prepared to land at the primitive airstrip at Phong Savan. Below, the grassy plain jutted out of the surrounding mountain jungle like a natural fortress, the massive clay jars that held the remains of the dead clearly visible, giving the plain more the look of some marketplace for unseen giants than of the cemetery that it was.

  The door of the transport swung open as the plane lumbered to a halt at the end of the dirt runway and Matt Bently got his first look at Touby Lyfoung, standing at the head of a Meo reception committee. The Meo standing behind Touby were dressed in the typical dark pajama-type clothing worn throughout Southeast Asia. Some wore traditional bamboo hats, some skullcaps, a few wide-brimmed western hats. Like their heads, their feet were covered with everything from homemade sandals to French military boots, and each carried a ragtag assortment of weapons; the only thing each man had in common was the traditional long Meo knife that hung in a sheath from his belt.

  In contrast, Touby was resplendent. He was dressed in the uniform of a French army officer, minus any indication of rank, complete with necktie and brass buttons; his trousers were stuffed carelessly into a pair of non-uniform Wellington boots, and atop his head he wore a pith helmet that made his short, round body seem more squat than it was.

  Bently, who had worn his own uniform for the occasion, glanced back at Jean, who had on the purloined uniform of a French army colonel.

  “This thing is turning into a fucking masquerade,” Bently said.

  Jean grunted an attempt at laughter. “Let’s hope there are no surprises when the masks come off.”

  He’s tight, Bently thought. Has been throughout the trip. He wants it to go well, needs it to, so he can show his old man he has what it takes. He wondered if Sartene realized the kind of pressure he had placed his son under. The kind that makes people screw up. He would have to try to help him, he decided. During the trip he had found he liked this big, hulking Corsican.

  They deplaned, followed by thirty-nine Mua warriors, all armed with automatic weapons, all dressed identically, a sharp contrast to the bobtailed assortment of the “superior” Ly clan. Standing before Touby, Bently and Sartene offered a sharp military salute in unison. Touby fought back the glee that quickly spread across his oversized mouth, pressing his lips shut, but unable to keep it from his eyes. He returned the salute, then stepped forward and greeted them in perfect French, his eyes passing over the Mua with a trace of nervousness.

  He looks like an oriental chipmunk, Bently thought, forcing himself to remember the man was important to his country’s interests. He controlled one of Indochina’s most productive opium-growing areas, twenty tons a year, with a potential of ten to twenty more if property managed.

  While greetings were exchanged, another Mua warrior stepped from behind the gathered Meo and walked toward his fellow tribesmen. Jean’s eyes caught the movement, and he looked hard at the dark-clad figure. The Mua nodded almost imperceptibly, indicating he had completed his task. The prince’s servant had delivered the message to Faydang. What Jean did not know, and would not, was that the servant’s throat had been cut within hours after the message had been received.

  “We are greatly honored to have you here,” Touby said, his eyes moving back and forth between Bently and Sartene. “Our life here is humble, but I think you will find it interesting.”

  “I’m sure we shall,” Bently said. “I’m already very impressed with your command of French.”

  Touby smiled enthusiastically. “I was very fortunate,” he said. “My father understood how much the French valued a good colonial education. I was graduated from the Vinh lycée in 1939, the first Meo ever to attend high school.”

  “Your father was a wise man,” Bently offered.

  “Indeed,” Touby said, nodding his head.

  “It will make matters easier for us,” Bently added. He gestured toward Jean. “Colonel Sartene has much to di
scuss with you. Matters of great importance to his government, to mine and, of course, to your people as well.”

  The transition had been made, as planned. It was clear now that Jean was in charge of the negotiations and that Bently was there in support of his position.

  Touby picked up on it immediately, turning his attention to the younger Sartene. “If you will come with me to my village we can talk in comfort,” Touby said. “I have a vehicle for us. My men will follow on foot. Unfortunately the number of vehicles we have is limited to one.”

  “Is the route secure?” Jean asked. His eyes were hard, his manner very military.

  Touby waved his hand in a broad, expansive gesture. “It is not far and I have men all along the route. We have no fear of Faydang’s people here.” He spoke the last sentence louder than necessary, for the benefit of his own men and the Mua.

  Sartene nodded, then turned and motioned to the Mua behind him. Two stepped forward. “These men will come with me,” he said. His voice had a command to it, and the gesture was intended both to let Lyfoung know these were his men, who followed his orders, and also to instill pride in the Mua as well. His father had cautioned him to make sure his men knew they were valued more than the Ly clansmen.

  The gesture was not wasted on Touby, and Bently noted a slight discomfort enter and then leave his eyes. Touby forced a smile and gestured toward a battered Japanese staff car fifty yards from the runway. Where the hell did they get parts to keep it running? Bently wondered, as he fell in three paces behind Sartene and Lyfoung. The proper distance to trail royalty, he told himself. The new kings of opium. No, only princes. The king was back in Vientiane, probably playing with his grandson.

  The route from Phong Savan to the Ly village of Lat Houang was an indirect route of nearly ten miles, traversing two of the worst rock-strewn roads Bently had ever seen. Parts for the Jap car obviously weren’t available, he told himself. Certainly not where the suspension system was concerned. He smiled to himself, suddenly wishing Malcolm Baker were with them.