“None,” Francesco answered. “I could use Touby’s men. It would reinforce his strength there, and later when you went to these villages with the Mua, there wouldn’t be any connection. Besides, Touby has good men.” He looked across the table and nodded his approval of Lyfoung.
“Yes, it’s good,” Lyfoung said, eager now for some support.
Sartene glanced between his son and Francesco. The offer surprised him too, but he knew that to refuse Francesco’s offer to help his son would only widen the rift that had divided them for years. He turned his attention to Bently. “Can you go with them, Matt?” he asked.
“Yes,” Bently said. “I’d like to. It’ll be my last chance to see the Meo country.”
“Last chance?” Sartene questioned.
“I’m going home, Buonaparte. At the end of the month. In time for Christmas. I was going to tell you later.”
“I’m sorry to hear this,” Sartene said. “I knew someday you would leave, but it was something I always put out of my mind.”
“I’m sorry too,” Jean said. “But perhaps I’ll come and visit you.” He let the words drop, then changed the subject. He had decided to speak to his father about Pierre’s schooling, about all of them leaving, but that was for later, after the others left. “Will you go with Francesco?” he asked.
“No. I’ve seen enough beheadings to last me a lifetime,” Bently said. “If you don’t mind I’ll stay with you.”
Deo leaned forward, taking his brandy snifter in both hands. He had no interest in the American. “What is this new plan you spoke of?” he asked Sartene.
Sartene took care to look at each man at the table. “It’s very simple, really, and as I said it has the support of younger French officers who can provide the initial training we will need. The other thing it will do is to move the hill people out of just a military fight with the Pathet Lao, a simple holding on to certain geography, and put them into the political fight.” He turned his attention to Lyfoung and Deo. “Right now your men work under this Mixed Airborne Commando Group of the French, whenever they need you to help their forces in your region. The rest of the time you do nothing but keep watch on your own people to maintain their loyalty. When you need money or arms you go to Saigon and take what you need from the SDECE caisse noire. In return they get their percentage of the opium harvest to finance this war they’re trying so hard to lose.”
“It’s the way the French have always wanted it,” Deo said. “We provide the opium and the fodder for the fire when it’s needed.” He glanced at Touby with a hint of irony. “At least it has made some of us rich,” he added.
Sartene’s eyes darkened, and he allowed them to carry their full weight to the two men. His voice remained soft, but held an undeniable threat. “The French may want it that way. But I don’t,” he said. Sartene timed his words, as always. Waiting before continuing, allowing for the full impact of his edict. “Whether the French remain here or not. Whether they’re replaced by the Americans or not. We will remain. To do this we have to have the support of the people who concern us.” He spread his hands apart benevolently. “We’ve been fair with them. We don’t cheat them like those fools in the Tonkin region. Maybe they think we tax them too much, but we provide them with protection for those taxes. They have a market for their opium, and that puts food on their tables. They have to understand that even if the French leave, they still have that market with us.” He jabbed one finger forward. “They also have to understand that they have their independence with us, and they will never have that with the communists. This independence is a fierce thing with these people, and it’s our best weapon.”
“I don’t understand,” Touby said. “How can we make our hold on the people stronger and make them think they are independent at the same time?”
“You think discipline and freedom can’t work together?” Sartene asked. He smiled at Lyfoung, playing the teacher to the pupil. “During the war in Europe the resistance operated with great independence, and they were still the most disciplined fighters in the war. When they were needed somewhere, they were there. Because they knew it was in their interest to be there.”
“I don’t understand,” Deo said.
“I think I do.” Bently smiled down the table at Sartene. “You’re talking about a maquis, a small, tightly disciplined counterguerrilla infrastructure.”
Sartene’s eyes warmed to his American friend. Over the years he had learned to appreciate the difference between this man and the fool he had known in the mountains of southern France. “We are going to miss you, my friend,” he said.
“But how do we pick the right people, and how do we train them?” Touby asked. This new idea meant work for him, and possible expense. But even worse, he felt, it might also prove a threat to his authority.
“When you go back to the hill country tomorrow, you and my son will begin this thing.” He noted Touby’s concern, understood it and decided to deal with it directly. “You’ll start in your own village. Later you can go to the others. In all we only need fifty men to start. They will report to you, and they’ll owe their new opportunity to you.”
Sartene stood and walked behind his chair, placing his hands on the back of it almost as though it were a lectern. “You’ll need men who fight well, who’ve proved their worth that way. And some of these men should be ambitious.” He wagged a finger at Touby. “Don’t be afraid of ambitious men. To have a successful organization you have to have these people. Just make sure they’re loyal to you and that they understand that their hopes for the future depend on your success. Besides, these people you choose will control very small numbers of men, so by themselves they won’t be a threat.”
Sartene returned to his chair and leaned forward, his palms pressed together, prayerlike. “You’ll only need fifty men to start with, picked from all the scattered villages of your region. They will be sent to the French Action School at Cap St. Jacques for thirty or forty days of training, whatever’s needed. The French officers I spoke of will do this for you in return for certain considerations.” He smiled. “About three or four thousand dollars’ worth of raw opium. A fortune back in France. They’ll train the men in small weapons, counterintelligence, explosives and how to operate radios. After the training we will break them up into four-man groups. Each group will have a commander—the ambitious ones—a radio operator and two intelligence officers. The groups will have been trained to operate independently, so if one group is destroyed, the maquis still survives. And each reports to you, and through you to my son.”
“But fifty men, just fifty …”
Sartene stopped Touby with a gesture. “When this first group returns, you will give them two tasks. First, they must gather information about Pathet Lao and Viet Minh in the area and report this back. Second, they must start to propagandize the villages. Remember, they’ll be coming back with new weapons and radios; they’ll have great stature and a certain closeness to you, their kaitong. In addition to their intelligence-gathering, each man will be expected to recruit two new men. Some will recruit three even, and all those men will then be sent off to be trained, at a cost to us of another nine thousand dollars in raw opium. But within about three months, well before the new planting must begin next March, we will have a maquis of forty different groups, each one capable of searching out Pathet Lao and Viet Minh and assassinating leaders and traitors, of finding camps and supply lines. Then, together with your warriors, they can drive them out, or disrupt them. And most important, they’ll be independent. And that will produce pride in their villages.” Sartene paused to smile, then jabbed his finger into his chest. “And they’ll owe this to us. And they’ll be loyal in order to keep what we’ve given them.”
“Won’t the French wonder about this new training?” Deo asked.
“Why should they?” Jean asked, taking up his father’s plan. “The French are always training mercenaries, and they’ll have nothing to do with the final way these men are organized. Besides, if someone
from SDECE becomes suspicious, a little raw opium will satisfy him. Everyone here has a bank account in Hong Kong that needs filling.”
Touby was fidgeting in his chair. He was still nervous, still concerned that he might lose control over his region.
Bently saw it and decided to soothe the fat little colonel. “This is a great opportunity for you, colonel,” he said. “There were guerrilla groups like this in the Philippines during the war, and the people who ran them became national heroes and are running the country now.” He caught a glimmer of contempt on Deo’s face. The Black Tais had no respect for the Meo, considering them little more than ignorant peasants. Bently’s manipulation of Touby seemed to confirm those beliefs. Bently decided to push Deo as well. “Isn’t that so, Colonel Deo?” he added.
“Most definitely,” Deo said.
“You must remember, Touby,” Sartene added, “these men will be in contact with us by radio. And we’ll have the power to take away what’s been given to them.”
“And that gives you even more power than you have now,” Auguste added.
Touby nodded, trying to convince himself, satisfy himself there was no threat. Sartene watched him, knowing the man would talk himself into it, if given time. Touby’s ego was such that he was able to convince himself that a defeat had been a victory, a criticism truly disguised praise. He believed he was kaitong of his region, even though he took his instructions from Jean and, therefore, from Sartene himself. Sartene picked up a small crystal bell and rang it. The servant reappeared and refilled the brandy snifters. The only person at the table who had not joined in support of his plan was Francesco. The fact had registered. It was unlike the man not to assert himself, not to attempt to impress with his ideas and his loyalty. But he had offered help. Sartene would now have to see how that help was given.
When the three orientals and Francesco had departed, Madeleine remained in the sitting room with Bently. Pierre was already asleep. It was late, and Madeleine had been kept from her bed only by the need to bid them goodbye as their hostess. Her father-in-law and her husband were in the study, discussing still another trip Jean would make tomorrow. The meetings, the private conversations, seemed interminable, and she longed for an end to it all.
Bently leaned against the superfluous marble mantel, enjoying the natural grace of the woman. He wondered if he had stayed on so much longer than he had intended because he so much enjoyed being near her. A longing from afar, he chided himself. Like some hackneyed line from a nineteenth-century novel. A stirring in his loins. He smiled at himself. You read too much romantic claptrap as a kid.
“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.
The Corsican Page 18
