Opium (3 page)

***

She stood on the balcony of the upstairs dining room, looking down into the courtyard. Baptiste was standing on the bonnet of the Packard, holding a dozen red roses.

“For you!' he shouted.

“What are you doing here?'

He tossed the flowers up to her. “They're plastic. I stole them from the hotel. But they're the only roses in all of Laos.”

“What do you want? My father will kill you!'

“He can't kill me. Not tonight, anyway. He's in Saigon.” He was wearing another white linen suit and his hair was slick and gleaming. “I have come to take you to dinner.”

“Don't be absurd!'

“You have another engagement?'

“That is not the point!'

“I am sober. Look!' He jumped off the bonnet and walked an imaginary tightrope beside the car. “You said I should be sober the next time I made love to you! You don't know how hard it is for me not to drink in a lousy place like this. But now I have found you I would do anything!'

“You must go away!'

Baptiste pointed to the ground floor windows. “The servants are all staring! If you do not come down, I will stay here until your father returns! You want him to shoot me down like a dog on your own doorstep?'

She smiled. Suitably outraged she was also delighted that someone had come to rescue her from another interminable and lonely evening. “If I come, you must promise to bring me home by ten o'clock.”

Baptiste bowed. “My word as an officer and a gentleman!'

***

Maxim's, unlike its more celebrated namesake in Paris, had latticed bamboo walls and a leaking tin roof. It was one of the new honky tonks that had recently sprung up all over Vientiane. The clientele were mainly French, sunburned men with rolled up sleeves and lank hair, former soldiers who had not found their way back from the war and were now involved in some way in smuggling gold and piasters and opium. The taxi girls squirmed against them on the dance floor or twittered around them at the tables, trying to entice them to their cribs in the back room.

As Noelle walked in she felt every head turn towards her. The men looked her up and down hungrily. The girls glared, jealous of the white woman stealing all the attention.

“I cannot be seen in a place like this!' she said.

“You don't like it?' Baptiste asked her.

“It's a brothel!''

Baptiste shrugged his shoulders. “I'm sorry. I've never been here before. I just heard the music was good.”

“You're a liar.”

“Just one drink. We'll sit at the back.”

She hesitated. “One drink only.”

Baptiste found a table in a dark corner and they sat down. He ordered two Pernods with water.

“All these men are staring at me!'

“They are admiring you.”

“I don't think admiration is the word.”

“Yes, they all want to sleep with you. But that is a form of admiration. Relax, you're with me.” He took out his Gitanes and grinned at her.

Their drinks arrived. For a brothel, the service was very good. Noelle studied him over the rim of her glass. “You shouldn't smoke so much. It is bad for your health.”

“Whoever told you that?'

“I read it somewhere.”

“Nonsense. Anyway, I enjoy it. It is a little habit I picked up in the war.” He began to tell her about himself. It was much the same story as her father had told her, she noted, except with a few embellishments; Baptiste claimed to be the most decorated French pilot since World War One. He glossed over his career in Bangkok.

“My father says you have since turned to a life of crime.”

“I am an honest businessman.”

“You have a fifty per cent share in one Cessna, which you use to smuggle piasters out of Vietnam.”

“Who doesn't? A little opium as well. But opium is more dangerous.”

“Not as dangerous as taking out Rocco Bonaventure's daughter behind his back.”

“Well, what is life without a little risk? If your father finds out, you will be in trouble as well.”

“Not as much as you.”

“You're worth it.”

“Am I? How do you know that?'

He shrugged his shoulders and smiled. “You don't think so?'

'“How did you raise the money to buy the plane?'

“I won a little money at cards.”

“And Jean-Marie?'

“He was even luckier. He has a rich father in Lyon. Do you believe in luck, Noelle?'

She shook her head.

“But being lucky is everything. Do you want to know about your luck?' He took her hand and examined her palm. His touch was cool, and gentle. “You see, your fortune is written right here. Look this is your love line, Noelle. You have only one, see? That's me.”

She snatched her hand away. “I would never fall in love with a man like you!'

“A man like me?'

“A playboy.”

He leaned forward so that his face was inches from hers. “Never say never. Come on!' here was a brass band from Saigon playing Afro-Cuban dance classics. He pulled her onto the dance floor. It was a samba, a brassy trumpet leading the melody, very slowly and very badly. But Baptiste was a good dancer, and made it easy to dance, even to bad music. She was aware of the smell of his sandalwood aftershave, the heat of his body, the grins of the men around the tables.

Well, she had wanted a little excitement and this made the blood run. But so did getting into a cage with a tiger. Did he really like this place or had he brought her here to show off? She pushed him away and sat down.

“What's wrong?'

“Everyone's looking at us.”

“You're worth looking at.”

"I don't like it.” It was a stark choice, she supposed, between boredom and dangerous men who just wanted to sleep with a French woman. You can be a slut or a nun, Noelle, but there doesn't seem to be anything for you in between. This one thinks that one dance and a lop-sided smile and you'll fall into his arms. Isn't there one man in Laos who's not a crook and a playboy?

“Do you want dinner?' Baptiste asked her."They have steak on the menu.”

“It's buffalo.”

“Well sure, but it makes a change from rice. What's wrong?'

“Who are you, Baptiste? Tell me about yourself.”

“What do you want to know?'

“Do you have a wife somewhere? A family in France who miss you?

“Who would marry a man like me? And my family - they were happy to see the back of me. Is that what you're looking for, Noelle? A husband?' I thought you just wanted a little fun.”

“I wish I was a man.”

“You're not built for it.”

“You see? You can say things like that and no one will think the worse of you. You know your problem, Baptiste? You lack subtlety.”

She finished her drink. “I don't like this place. Take me home.”

“The night's still young.”

She picked up her purse and stood up. “I said I'd have one drink. Now I must go.”

Outside the siclo drivers were smoking and laughing next their pedicabs. They stared at her as she walked out.

Baptiste ran to catch up with her.

“You are crazy. First you hit your boyfriend because he punches me-'

'-I didn't hit him, I pushed him.”

'-then when I come to take you dancing you act like you're a nun, or I don't know what.”

“Do you know what will happen if my father finds out about this?'

“You're the most beautiful girl I have ever seen in my whole damn life.

She waited at the passenger door. He opened it for her and she got in. He climbed behind the wheel, put the keys in the ignition, hesitated. “What is it you want?'

“I can tell you what I don't want.”

“And what is that?'

“I want to dance properly, without feeling like I'm parading naked in front of a room full of men. I'd like a proper dinner. I'd like to meet a man who is handsome without being smug. I don't want to be just another kill painted on the side of your plane.”

“I am not going to paint you on the side of my plane.”

“Why, isn't there room?'

“You want to go home?'

“No, I don't want to go home. I'm bored and I'm lonely. But if I stay here I feel cheap. That's my choice.”

He took her face in his hands and kissed her hard on the mouth. She pulled away, breathless. He had lost the cocky smile, at least. “Take me home,” she said.

When they reached the villa he hurried around the car to hold open the door. He took her hand to help her out. “An officer and a gentleman,” she said.

“I can be, if you want.”

She went up the steps to the door. He was still watching her. She turned around, ran back, and threw her arms around his neck. She kissed him hard on the lips, forcing him backwards over the hood of the Packard.

She pulled away from him just as suddenly, then hurried inside, slamming the door behind her, leaving him staring after her, astonished.

Chapter 4

Saigon

S
AIGON reminded Rocco Bonaventure of a French provincial town that had been somehow scooped up by a giant hand and set down in the middle of an Asian swamp.

The streets were broad, lined with tamarind and lime trees, and the villas behind the painted stucco walls had large white porte cochères and red-tiled roofs. But the traffic was like nothing you would see in France; bicycles and putt-putt motorcycles with whole families balanced precariously around papa on the handlebars and behind him on the seat; ancient open touring cars that the
Saigonnais
used as jitneys; and dilapidated Renault and Peugeot taxis that looked as if they were held together with bits of wire.

And often were.

Bonaventure watched it all from the terrace of the Continental Hotel, under one of the great arches that screened the tables. He always came here when he was in Saigon. The terrace was supposed to be relatively safe from the grenades that were still occasionally tossed into the cafés by the Viet Minh.

Across the table from him, Colonel Tran van Ky gulped an ice cube from his cognac and soda and crunched it between his back teeth. He was a cheerful, round-faced man, with a goatee beard. “So, how was the opium harvest?' he asked.

Bonaventure's expression betrayed nothing. “Adequate.”

Ky grinned. “Perhaps it will be the last one for a while.”

“The Pathet Lao are not going to stop us. They're just savages with bows and arrows.”

“My information is that they have attacked Lao outposts around Sam Neua and Phong Saly. And that the Chinese are conducting manoeuvres along the border.”

“The Americans will never allow the communists to take over in Laos.”

Eisenhower's passionate war against the communists had saved Vietnam from Ho Chi Minh after partition. Bonaventure was convinced he would make a stand in Laos as well. He had better, for all their sakes. Laos was still Saigon's main source of illegal opium, thanks to Rocco Bonaventure and Air Laos. Bonaventure could not operate so profitably without Li's protection, but then the colonel was being generously rewarded for his services.

Tran van Ky was a rare jewel, not only one of President Diem's closest advisers, but also director of the Military Security Service, the organisation responsible for investigating corruption inside the Army. In practise, it put him in charge of the graft; and Ky was a man who led by example. For the past three years he had been a silent partner in Air Laos.

The only real problem was the communists on both sides of the border. The Viet Minh had not been as easily contained as the Americans had thought. And now these Pathet Lao were causing trouble on the other side of the border as well.

“You know, I still sometimes get a little nostalgic for the Binh Xuyen,” the colonel said.

Bonaventure smiled. He remembered the Binh Xuyen from his early days in Saigon; they had started out as a gang of river pirates and went on to become Vietnam's largest and most efficient private army. While the rest of the country was being overrun with reds, they had kept the city safe, in return for the opium concession. When the French left in 1955, the Americans had moved in and in their high-minded innocence had put President Diem in the Doc Lap palace. His CIA advisers had persuaded him to crush the Binh Xuyen; the opium trade had offended the sensibilities of the cold war warriors.

Ridiculous. Had they really believed they could govern Saigon without opium?

After that Bonaventure had been forced to use drop zones in the Northern Highlands and the Gulf of Siam to smuggle in his opium cargoes. The Saigon ban had been in place now for over three years, and trade had been badly hampered.