Corsican Honor

by William Heffernan

  Meme grunted. “He would like my job, and my balls hanging from a hook in his office.”

  “Well, I’ll guarantee your job. You’ll have to take care of your balls yourself,” Piers said.

  “I have done so all my life,” Meme said. He looked around the room with satisfaction. “How do you like our little celebration?” he asked.

  Piers smiled. “As Monsieur Francisci would say, its success is an inspiration.”

  They laughed, and Piers circled Meme’s shoulders with his arm. He glanced at his watch. “Now I’d like to show you and Antoine another inspiration,” he said. “It will only take us away from the party for a short time.”

  Piers, accompanied by Meme, Antoine, and Colette, drove the short distance to the maritime railroad station, which was adjacent to the Joliette Ship Basin. The afternoon sun was bright and warm, cutting the effect of the winter mistral that blew steadily in from the sea.

  When they left the car, Piers directed them away from the station and out along the outer seawall, which overlooked both the port and the railyard. A train was just pulling into the station. It held eighty-seven boxcars, carrying flour, milk, sugar, and fruit. A banner running the length of five cars simply stated: “GIFTS FROM THE AMERICAN PEOPLE.” Along the station platform hundreds of schoolchildren stood cheering and waving tiny American flags.

  Up on the seawall, the four watchers began to laugh.

  “Magnifique,” Antoine said.

  “Yes,” Piers said. “It is, isn’t it?”

  CHAPTER

  25

  Marseilles, 1950

  The causes of the new strike brewed slowly, and the outcome should not have come as a surprise.

  It surprised Piers Moran. And it surprised the Pisani brothers and members of Gaston Defferre’s Socialist party, who had made dramatic political advances in the intervening three years, but who had not kept touch with the people.

  The strike was centered on the docks, and it began in January with what seemed no more than a political protest. The French were embroiled in a war in Indochina against the forces of Ho Chi Minh. The Vietnamese revolutionary was a popular figure in France, and especially among leftist workers in Marseilles, and during his years in France he had helped found the French Communist party. Now, in January, Marseilles dockworkers came to his aid with selective boycotts of freighters carrying supplies to the war zone.

  But on February 3, the labor coalition surprised its opponents when it demanded the return of the French Expeditionary Corps from Indochina, and urged workers to take the most effective actions possible against the war in Vietnam. That produced an immediate shutdown of Marseilles’s port, along with stoppages in smaller, less important ports along the Atlantic, and by mid-February the strike had spread to the metal industries, mines, and the railways.

  But the strike was only indirectly about the war—it was little more than an excuse, a flashpoint. Since 1947 the lot of French workers had not significantly improved. Wages were still low, jobs were still scarce, and the influx of American food had solved only one part of the myriad problems facing the average family.

  Yet throughout most of France, the strike was halfhearted, at best, and the Paris newspaper Combat reported that Marseilles was once again the hard core, with seventy percent of its dockworkers on strike, compared with only two percent in Bordeaux, twenty percent in Toulouse, and twenty percent in Nice. But the port of Marseilles was the key, and without it France was effectively cut off from the sea.

  This inadvertently laid the blame at Piers Moran’s doorstep, and threatened to stall, or even kill, his rising star within the CIA.

  “We have fucked up royally,” Piers insisted when Antoine and Meme arrived at his office in the U.S. consulate. He was seeking to lay blame, and the Pisanis were the easiest target. Over the intervening three years their strength within the milieu had grown dramatically, and they had greatly expanded their activities in art thefts, international smuggling, and counterfeiting. At present their illegal bank accounts were bulging with money earned from smuggling “tax-free” American cigarettes from North Africa into France. They had not taken care of business—his business—Piers believed. But then, neither had he, and he knew Meme and Antoine were little more than convenient scapegoats.

  Meme and Antoine knew it as well, and they waited in silence to see how far their friend would push his accusations.

  Piers paced his office. The two sets of hard eyes that bored into him were quickly bringing him back to reality. Blame, passed on to his masters in Washington, would not solve the problem. It would only allow his star to sputter on until he brought the dockworkers of Marseilles to heel. And he couldn’t do that without the Pisani brothers.

  “Shit,” he said as he fell back into his chair. Coarse language was uncommon for Piers, and two epithets in two sentences only emphasized the stress he was under.

  “We should have listened to what the people were grumbling about. Washington should have listened, or Defferre. Somebody should have listened to them.” Piers knew that somebody was he. Now his newly found power was slipping away because he had chosen to ignore the obvious. The only saving factor was that his CIA superiors and the State Department had ignored the warnings as well. So they would cover their asses, and also his, at least temporarily.

  “If we don’t control the docks, we don’t control Marseilles,” he said. “And the coalition can shut us down whenever they want.” He sat forward, squeezing his eyes with thumb and index finger. “How many people, loyal to your faction, do you have working on the docks?” he asked.

  “A few hundred,” Antoine said. “But they are durs, tough ones, and there are other Corsicans there who will do as they are told.”

  Piers knew that more than ten percent of Marseilles’s population was Corsican, but it still wasn’t enough. They would have to go to war with the strikers again. It would be the only way to end the strike quickly. And that was what Washington would expect. The same results Piers had achieved three years ago.

  “Perhaps the government can threaten to send in troops again,” Meme suggested.

  “We can ask,” Piers said. “But the political climate is different. The best we can hope for is to use troops to help the non-striking workers load ships. And we’ll still have to get them across the picket lines.”

  “We’ll get them across,” Antoine said. “You tell me when and how many. I’ll shove their strike so far up their asses, they’ll choke on it.”

  Piers smiled for the first time. Meme and Antoine were better dressed and more affluent, but they were still the same men he had discovered three years before. And they had considerably more men and power now.

  “We’ll need more of your men working on the docks,” Piers said. “You’re going to have to shove them down the labor coalition’s throat, but we have to have them there.” Piers thought a moment. “And be careful,” he said. “We don’t want any union martyrs. I want them seen as failures, not as heroes.”

  “We will see to it,” Meme said.

  When the Pisanis left, Piers remained behind his desk reflecting on the causes of this near debacle. Even the fact that the brothers had been here, in his office, demonstrated how careless and cavalier they’d all become. He looked around at the trappings of his office. It showed it as well. Great effort had gone into it—largely with his wife, Cyn’s, help. He was a firm believer in the effect of display, and had used his own money—and his wife’s—to achieve the desired result.

  He had brought his family to France in 1948, and housed them in an aging villa outside Aix-en-Provence, some thirty kilometers north of Marseilles. And he had found Colette a new, and more fashionable, apartment off the Boulevard de la Corderie. He had literally been living the life of a French aristocrat, and like many of those self-indulgent libertines, he had forgotten to take care of business along the way. It was a mistake he vowed not to make again.

  But that had been largely Cyn’s fault, he told himself. If only she were a bit
more like Colette. If only there were a bit more sin in Cyn. Then the indulgence would not have been necessary.

  The thick carpeting and rich leather furniture stared back at him now, almost as a reproach. In 1947 he had virtually worked out of a closet, had roamed the streets and alleyways with Meme and Antoine, and had not been afraid to get his hands dirty. He would get back to that, he told himself, and he would use this setback as an object lesson not to be forgotten.

  Antoine pushed his way into the Communist union’s strike headquarters that had been set up in a warehouse office on one of the docks. Antoine was backed up by five of his men, but had he come alone he would have met with little resistance. Such was the new power of the Pisani faction.

  The union leaders—five of them—were in the midst of a meeting when Antoine kicked open the door. Not only had these men resisted adding new members of the milieu to their work force, they had threatened to fire those already on the payroll for refusing to honor the strike.

  The men jumped to their feet as Antoine burst through the door, but it was more out of shock, and fear of survival, than any move to fight. Only the union head, a grizzled old Resistance fighter named Jules Millau, stood his ground.

  “It is easier, Monsieur Pisani, to use the doorknob rather than your foot,” he said.

  Antoine glared at him. “The doorknob is going up your ass, followed by my foot,” he snapped. “And you will be buried with it sticking out of your mouth unless I get the action I want without delay.”

  Millau paled. Not because he was a man easily frightened, but rather because he was one who understood reality.

  “This is a union matter,” Millau said. “It is not a personal assault against your group.”

  “I have made it personal,” Antoine said. “And I intend to make each of you pay personally if you continue this strike.”

  “But that is madness,” Millau shouted, losing control of his tongue. “You cannot tell us how and when to strike. We are a free labor union.”

  “You are a bunch of communist pigs,” Antoine shouted back. “And I will herd you all to the slaughterhouse myself.”

  The others shrunk back, but Millau’s anger grew.

  Antoine motioned with his head to the men behind him. “I want these men put to work at once,” he snapped. “And I will send more tomorrow, and more the next day.”

  Millau leaned forward, his fists supporting his weight on the table that separated them.

  “Not only will these men not be hired, monsieur, but I will go out to the docks and fire the other scum you have working here.”

  Antoine’s hand shot out before Millau could react, and grabbed him by the throat and dragged him across the table. His other hand grabbed the seat of Millau’s pants, and he propelled him out the door, through the warehouse, and out onto the dock. There he shifted his hand so he had a firm grip on Millau’s testicles and his throat, and lifted him off the ground and threw him into the harbor.

  Antoine stared down at the union boss as he came to the surface sputtering and splashing in the oily water.

  “I do not think he can swim,” one of Antoine’s men said.

  Antoine continued to stare at Millau. “Then he will drown,” he said as he turned and walked away.

  Other dockworkers pulled Millau from the water, and within the hour the five Pisani men were at work on the docks. The next day, twenty more joined them, and the day after that, fifty more were added to the work force.

  Piers stared at him in disbelief. “Jesus Christ, Antoine. I specifically told you we didn’t want any martyrs.”

  Three days had passed before Piers heard of the incident, and Antoine had just confirmed it. But by now the fruits of the act were already obvious. Pisani men were everywhere on the docks.

  They were sitting at the bar of the Pisanis’ new nightclub, The Parakeet, which was still being readied for its grand opening. Piers shook his head, part in wonder, part in frustration. “The fool could have drowned,” he complained.

  “A man who cannot swim should stay away from the water,” Antoine said. “Perhaps he has learned a valuable lesson.”

  Piers shook his head again and fought back laughter. That morning he had heard from Paris that French troops would be arriving in two weeks to begin working the docks. There was nothing that could dampen his elation, and his only concern now was to get them across the picket lines.

  “Your men will have to be ready when the troops arrive,” Piers said. “I want them moved across without one soldier being hurt.”

  “They will go across smoothly and quickly,” Antoine promised. “They will go across like shit coming out of a frightened man.”

  Piers’s wife, Cynthia, was working in her flower garden when he arrived home that night, checking rose bushes that had been banked and covered for the winter. She was a beautiful woman with light blond hair, blue eyes, and a slightly vapid smile. She seemed aloof, not because she lacked warmth, but rather because she was a bit unaware of all that surrounded her and preferred it that way. She liked order—in her life and her garden—and became ruffled when she discovered it wasn’t there.

  The two boys were playing at the rear of the long, sloping yard behind the house. Richard, who was six, was attempting to climb a tree that was too much for him, and little Alex, just three, was watching with enthusiasm, jumping up and down and clapping his small hands.

  Piers watched the scene and was grateful for it. It seemed perfect, an ideal that any man should envy. But he should have a drink in hand as he viewed it, he thought. Then the picture would be complete.

  His wife looked up as his shadow fell across her, and she smiled, rose to her feet, removed her gardening gloves, and extended her cheek for a kiss. Another perfect picture, he thought. It was all so genteel.

  “Are you home for the night?” Cynthia asked.

  Piers made a face. “Afraid not. I’ll have to go back in, but I wanted to steal some time with you all.”

  Cynthia looked slightly mournful, then brightened. “I swear, the garden is going to bloom by March if this weather keeps up. Don’t you agree?”

  “It could indeed,” he said.

  The boys had seen him now and were running toward him across the wide lawn. Richard was out in front, legs pumping in that slightly awkward way of young boys who have not yet achieved full coordination; Alex behind, tottering from side to side, a great grin on his face.

  Richard stopped at his side, breathing hard, and began jabbering about needing a ladder for his tree. Piers ruffled his hair, then scooped up Alex as he fell into his legs and raised him up to sit on his forearm. The child hugged his neck and kissed him. Then he too began talking about the tree, asking if he could climb it, even though Richard said he couldn’t.

  “When you’re a bit older,” Piers said. He looked down at Richard. “We’ll try to build a ladder this weekend,” he added.

  All that settled, the boys ran off again, and Cynthia led Piers up to the terrace that ran along the rear of the old stone house. It was a wonderful house, Piers thought. An old manoir, parts of which dated back to the fourteenth century, it had been the ancestral home of an aging count who had not been able to hide his money from the Nazis and was now forced to rent it out to avoid losing it.

  They sat on the terrace, and a maid brought them two dry martinis, which she had been taught to make. It was unseasonably warm for February, more like April.

  “How were the boys today?” Piers asked.

  “Wonderful,” Cynthia said. “But Alex is beginning to ask the strangest things. He asked me today if flowers went to heaven when they died, or if they were just born again the next year. It was almost as though he’d been thinking about reincarnation.”

  Piers laughed. “I doubt that. It seems like a natural progression of thought.”

  “Do you think so? Goodness, I didn’t.”

  They sipped their drinks in quiet, enjoying the mild weather, Cynthia watching the boys, who were back at the tree again, Piers thi
nking how much he enjoyed the few moments of peace he was able to snatch from the madness that surrounded him. But he loved the madness too, he knew. There was an adventure about it he had always wanted in his life.

  “When will you have to go back in?” Cynthia asked.

  “An hour. Two at the most.”

  She offered a mock pout. “Will you be very late?”

  “Mmm. Might even have to stay the night.”

  “I suppose you’ll be with those dreadful Pisani brothers.”

  She knew about the strike, had read about the violence that surrounded it. But she preferred not to talk about it. She had met the Pisani brothers once, when she and Piers had given a housewarming party, and she had avoided all contact thereafter. It was easier, more comfortable, to blame them for her husband’s work.

  “They’re not so dreadful, Cyn.” He laughed. “Well, they are dreadful, but they’re very useful to me, and I rather enjoy them. It’s like going to a zoo and seeing the dangerous animals, minus the bars.”

  “They should be caged,” she said. “When I read about them in the papers, I shudder that you have to deal with them.”

  He was surprised that Cyn read that type of news at all. “The newspapers exaggerate,” he lied. “They’re crooks, but they’re not killers. They’re just different from the type of thief you’re used to. They don’t steal on the stock market. They do it the old-fashioned way. With guns. Or, rather, they have people who do it for them.”

  “I think they’re despicable. And, worse, they’re crude.”

  Piers laughed again. “You think with better manners, you’d find them more agreeable?”

  Cynthia ignored him. “I understand they run brothels as well,” she said, as though it were a final debasement.

  “Well, that’s somewhat of a French tradition,” he said. “Some Frenchmen are too old, or lazy, to procure for themselves.”

  “Well, don’t you partake,” she said. “Not even if they offer.”

  Piers smiled at her. “I’m neither too old nor too lazy,” he said.

  Cynthia slapped at him playfully with her hand.