by Don Winslow
I’m glad to see you, Nicholai, Haverford thought.
He had been reasonably sure that Hel would come to Saigon, but it was good to know he was right.
Nicholai walked past a rather surprising bronze statue of Napoleon to the reception desk.
“Monsieur Guibert?” The métis clerk smiled. He had received a call from Bay Vien himself and was appropriately obsequious. “Welcome to the Continental. It is our pleasure to have you.”
“Thank you.”
“Your room is ready,” the clerk said. “And Monsieur Mancini invites you to have a drink with him, if it is convenient for you. In the bar? Six o’clock?”
“Please relay my honored acceptance,” Nicholai said. Signavi had apparently wasted no time informing his Corsican colleagues of his arrival in the city.
Mathieu Mancini had come to Saigon after World War I, married a wealthy Vietnamese woman, and bought the Continental. Reputed to be the head of L’Union Corse, the Corsican mafia, in Saigon he was a confidant of Bao Dai’s.
And a friend to Bay Vien.
A bellhop took Nicholai to his room on the fourth and top floor. It was large and high-ceilinged, with whitewashed walls and simple but elegant wooden furniture. French doors opened onto a small, private balcony behind iron grillwork. A ceiling fan circulated the humid air, providing some relief.
Nicholai tipped the bellboy and then was glad for some privacy and solitude. He called room service for an iced beer, drew a steaming hot bath, and luxuriated in it for half an hour.
It was good to be in a city again and experience some luxury and sophistication that he hadn’t known since Shanghai. The contrast between the near-scalding water and the cold beer was a sharp delight, and Nicholai allowed himself to give in to the realm of the senses for a few minutes.
Then he evaluated the Go board.
He had advanced his position. I’m safely out of China, he thought, have funds — or will have tomorrow — and am in Saigon with Bay Vien as a patron and protector.
Good and good.
And Solange is likely somewhere in the city.
Better.
But my position is nevertheless precarious.
Haverford is sitting in the bar across the street, apparently unconcerned with being discovered. He knows I’m alive and where I am. Beijing and Moscow will soon know, if they don’t already, and might well send people to kill or kidnap me. Of the two, the Chinese are the greater threat as the Russians will have a problem getting agents into Saigon.
The “Guibert” cover has a short life. I need a new identity, and quickly, if I’m ever to get out of Saigon. And before I leave, I have things to accomplish.
But all that is several moves off, he reminded himself. The next part of the game is to see what Mancini wants.
The Corsican greeted him warmly.
“Monsieur Guibert,” Mancini said. He kissed Nicholai on both cheeks, patted him on the shoulders, and continued, “Welcome, welcome.”
Mancini smelled of cologne and tobacco.
“Thank you, Monsieur Mancini.”
“Call me Mathieu, please.”
“I’m Michel.”
The Continental’s owner was short but looked immensely powerful, barrel-chested with the big, sloping shoulders of a former boxer. A few strands of silver glistened at the temples of thick black hair that was slicked straight back. His off-white cotton suit and monogrammed white shirt were beautifully cut, and he saw that Nicholai noticed.
“I’ll introduce you to my tailor,” Mancini said. “Vietnamese guy at the ‘Botany’ shop, just down Catinat.”
“I would appreciate that.”
“You’re new to Saigon?”
“First time here.”
“You’re in for a treat,” Mancini said. “It’s a beautiful city, beautiful. So many pleasures on offer.”
And which, Nicholai wondered, are you going to offer me?
“Pastaga?” Mancini asked, using Marseille slang for pastis. He searched Nicholai’s eyes for any blink of incomprehension.
“I could do with a pastis,” Nicholai answered. Solange had covered the word with him many times and familiarized him with the thick yellow liqueur, a close cousin of absinthe.
“Ah, you’re from the south,” Mancini said.
“Montpellier,” Nicholai said, deciding to end the honeymoon. “But you knew that already.”
“I know everything, young man,” Mancini said amiably. “Come on, then. I won’t insult you with the crap we serve the colons. The real stuff is out here.”
As he led Nicholai out of the bar into a private garden, Mancini said, “Me, I’m from Corsica originally. But you already knew that. Did you also know that Corsicans make the best assassins in the world?”
“Is that right?” Nicholai answered. He wondered what the ninja might have to say about it.
“Take it as a fact.”
And a warning, Nicholai thought.
They walked into a narrow strip of garden where several older men sat around two white wrought-iron tables. The men all wore white short-sleeved shirts and either white or light khaki loose-fitting trousers. A couple of them sported broad-brimmed hats for protection against the sun.
Nicholai knew that he was looking at L’Union Corse.
Mancini took off his jacket, draped it on the back of a chair, sat down, and gestured for Nicholai to do likewise.
“This is my newest guest,” Mancini said as Nicholai took a chair. “Michel Guibert.”
He introduced each of the five men — Antonucci, Guarini, Ribieri, Sarti, Luciani — each of whom offered a hand with a gruff nod. Mancini filled Nicholai’s glass with pastis. The men looked on as Nicholai took the carafe of water set on the table and poured some in to dilute his drink. Then he raised the glass, said, “Salut,” and sipped. His familiarity with the pastaga seemed to relax the group, who sat back in the chairs, drank, and took the sun.
“So,” Mancini said, “what brings you to Saigon?”
“Business,” Nicholai answered.
“How is your father?” asked Antonucci.
Antonucci looked to be in his early fifties, and was as skinny as Mancini was stout. But the deeply tanned forearms under his rolled-up sleeves looked like iron, and despite his casual but expensive clothes, the man looked like he could be a day laborer.
“He’s well,” Nicholai responded. “You know him?”
“We’ve done business,” Antonucci said. “In the past.”
“Well,” Nicholai said, raising his glass, “here’s to the future.”
They drank a round. Then Antonucci raised his glass toward Mancini and said, “To my new neighbor.”
Mancini explained to Nicholai. “After years of trying, I just managed to acquire the Majestic Hotel, next door to Antonucci’s nightclub.”
“Your nightclub?” Nicholai asked.
“La Croix du Sud,” Antonucci said, then added pointedly, “In the Corsican quarter, on the harbor. Where all the imports and exports come and go.”
“You’d like his club,” Mancini said to Nicholai. “One of those pleasures we talked about.”
“Come tonight,” Antonucci said.
“Tonight?” Nicholai asked.
Antonucci leaned across the table and looked Nicholai full in the face. “Tonight.”
A little while later, Mancini and Antonucci went out the back gate and strolled across the broad Opera Square. On the other side, the Saigon Opera House loomed in all its French colonial glory. The other Corsicans had drifted home. It was that hour, “the hour of the pipe,” and these longtime residents of Saigon had acquired many local habits.
“What do you think?” Mancini asked.
“Smart young man,” Antonucci said, pausing for a moment to relight his cigar. “Maybe we can make some money with him.”
They walked across the square, quiet now in the torpid hour before the cool of evening would bring out young lovers, old strollers, people looking for relaxation and those searching for
excitement.
In his lifetime Antonucci had seen many things. He had started life as a shoeless shepherd, but soon decided that a life of barefoot labor and drudgery was not for him. So he hopped a freighter to Indochina, jumped ship in Saigon, and within two years turned the gaggle of girls he pimped into a prosperous brothel. He used those proceeds to buy the Croix du Sud, the Southern Cross, which turned a profit of its own but really served to launder the money he made with Mancini smuggling heroin and gold into Marseille.
They bought the heroin directly from the French army. Bay Vien bought the bulk of it, but La Corse purchased the surplus. The profits were enormous, even after the hefty cut that went to Bao Dai. They used the money to buy yet more clubs, restaurants, and hotels. Mancini had the Continental and now the Majestic, Luciani owned the Palace. It wouldn’t be long before the Corsicans had a monopoly on Saigon’s hosting business. Their children, or at least their grandchildren, would be restaurateurs and hoteliers instead of dope and currency smugglers.
It was a good life, and he had survived the French, then the Japanese, briefly the British (who were fools anyway), and then the French again. Now the French, desperate for allies, turned a blind eye to the heroin, and the Corsicans had forged a working relationship with the Binh Xuyen and Bao Dai.
All this could end if the Communists won and took over the country, but still Antonucci thought he could work out an accommodation with them. Asia was Asia, and life would go on as usual. Communist or no, men would still want women and money.
Corsica had been conquered by everybody — Greeks, Romans, Arabs, Turks, Normans, French, Germans — and the Corsicans were used to working out a way of living with all of them. It was a national trait, an innate talent.
But now the Americans were edging out the French, and that was a different story. Les amerloques, the “crazy Americans,” were impractical, puritanical, and moralistic. They would seek to dump Bao Dai and put in their own man, sweep the carpet clean.
And now this young Guibert had turned up and the rumor was that he had sold a shipment of stolen American arms to Bay Vien. “We should find out more about this Guibert. Use the Belgian dwarf, I can’t think of his name …”
“De Lhandes,” Mancini said. “Odd little fellow. But he seems to sniff out everything.”
“Useful.”
“Very useful.”
Guibert might be just what he claims to be, the heir to his family’s gunrunning business. But then again, perhaps he is an agent of French intelligence. The Deuxième Bureau, SDECE, or perhaps the Sûreté. Or does he serve the Americans, as so much of the world seems to do these days? Maybe he is simply a young man on the make. In which case we can make some money together.
“I already did,” Mancini answered. “Even before he arrived. The dwarf says that he appears to be who he says he is. Bay Vien’s people say the same thing. I had his room searched while we were having pastaga.”
We shall see, Antonucci thought. He looked at Mancini and uttered the ancient words. “Per tu amicu.”
“Per tu amicu,” Mancini ritually responded.
For your friendship.
106
HIS ROOM HAD BEEN tossed.
Carefully and professionally, Nicholai observed, but tossed nevertheless. Before leaving the room he had plucked a hair from his head and placed it across two drawers on his bureau, and now the hair was gone.
It didn’t matter — they would find nothing they weren’t supposed to find.
Had Mancini ordered it? Probably, although it could have been the French, who had a veritable alphabet soup of police and intelligence services in Saigon, none of whom were known to be overly respectful of privacy.
And the Corsican mob expects my presence at La Croix du Sud tonight. For what purpose? To be grilled, seduced, observed, threatened, perhaps assassinated? Again, it didn’t matter —to complete his assignment he would have to do business in Saigon, and the Corsicans had made it very clear that he couldn’t do business in Saigon without doing business with them.
Leave it to later, he told himself. You have something else to do now.
He splashed some water on his face to wipe off the sweat and the slightly dizzying effect of the pastis, then went downstairs and out onto the street.
Rue Catinat was amber in the late dusk as the streetlights came on. Nicholai took a moment to orient himself. On one end of the boulevard was the harbor, on the other end the distinctive twin spires of the Cathedral de Notre Dame.
A five-block walk took him to a shop called International Philately. The man behind the counter was a turbaned Sikh. The three shelves of the glass counter held frames of postage stamps, most of them rare, many of them expensive.
“How may I help you, sir?”
“I was hoping,” Nicholai said, using the code that Yu had given him to contact the Viet Minh, “that you might have a 1914 ‘Mythen’?”
“Blue or green, sir?”
“Green.”
“Green” meant that he was under no immediate danger and that it was safe to proceed.
“I will need to check in the back, please.”
“Thank you.”
The man was gone for less than a minute and returned with a thin glassine envelope. He carefully opened it and showed Nicholai the block of stamps. Nicholai held it up to the desk lamp for inspection and said, “Yes, I’ll have them.”
“Five hundred and forty piastres, please.”
Nicholai paid him.
The Sikh returned the stamps to the glassine envelope, sealed it, and then slipped it into a larger, padded envelope that he handed to Nicholai. Nicholai put the envelope into his jacket pocket and left. He stopped at a newspaper kiosk, bought that day’s edition of the Journal d’Extrême-Orient and a packet of Cigarettes Nationales, then went farther down the street, found a table at a café called La Pagode, and ordered a beer.
He opened his paper, read for a moment until the beer — wonderfully cold — arrived. Then he took out the envelope and, using the paper to shield his hands from view, opened it and read what was written on the inside flap of the larger envelope:
One o’clock tomorrow, go to Sarreau’s Pharmacie. Buy two packets of enterovioform, then walk to the Neptuna Swimming Pool and wait.
Vietnamese women, stunningly elegant wrapped in silk, strolled slowly by, shy but fully aware of their effect. Then there were the métis — the mixed heritage of Asia and Europe — impossibly beautiful with their golden complexions and almond eyes, which in their glint seemed to say that East and West can definitely meet and that it is indeed possible to have the best of both worlds. And the occasional colon woman with blonde hair like Solange.
Nicholai felt a tinge of guilt along with the physical stirring.
But if the coming of night signaled a certain sexual excitement, it also meant danger, and the Vietnamese police and French army patrols also came out, a prosaic reminder that this beautiful city was also a city at war. The restaurants on the boulevard sported anti-grenade screens, and the eyes of the police showed not the usual boredom of merely walking the beat but an alertness to genuine threat. The Binh Xuyen rode up and down the street in their green Jeeps, a few with machine guns mounted on the back.
Nicholai finished his beer, left a few piastres, and headed out.
107
BERNARD DE LHANDES FOUND the Saigon chief of SDECE in his office.
Service de Documentation Extérieure et de Contre-Espionage. Only the French bureaucracy, De Lhandes thought, could come up with that title.
Sans prélude, De Lhandes took the bottle of cassis from the desktop, helped himself to a glass, and folded his thin frame into a chair. The air around the desk was thick with smoke, and Colonel Raynal’s ashtray was already overflowing.
Raynal was a fat man with dark, heavy rings under his eyes. De Lhandes thought that both conditions came from his spending countless hours behind his desk, smoking cigarettes and eating bad food as he went over the stacks of reports that came th
rough every day. If you were charged with keeping up with all the espionage in Saigon, you were charged with a lot.
“There’s a new player in town,” De Lhandes said. The Corsicans had asked him to find out what he could about this Guibert, and De Lhandes was in the business of buying and selling information. If he could do both at the same time, all the better.
Raynal sighed. There were already too many old players in town, a new one was the last thing he needed. “And who would that be?”
“Something called a ‘Michel Guibert,’ “De Lhandes said. “He turned up at the Continental.”
Raynal resisted the bait. “Probably just some businessman.”
“Probably,” De Lhandes agreed as he helped himself to another drink and one of Raynal’s cigarettes. “But he joined the Corsicans for their afternoon pastis.”
Raynal sighed again. A true Parisian, he despised Corsicans as a matter of social duty, and resented that his job forced him to at least tolerate, if not actively cooperate with, them here in Saigon. “What do they want with this … Guibert, was it?”
“It was,” De Lhandes said. “And who knows?”
Who does know, De Lhandes pondered, what L’Union Corse is ever up to? It has its greasy fingers into every pie. He slumped a little more into the chair and contemplated the slow circulation of the ceiling fan.
Raynal had a fondness for the Belgian dwarf, and he was useful. A few piastres here and there, a few chips at the casinos, a girl tossed in occasionally, it was little enough. And Raynal needed assets just now, especially the sort that warned him of newcomers.
“Operation X” — could we have come up with a less creative name? — was running smoothly and nothing must be allowed to interfere with that, he thought. If “X” failed, we could very well lose the war, with it Indochina, and with that any vestiges of a French Empire.
