The Corsican (41 page)

She looked back at him. He felt a nervous tide swell in his stomach, the muscles in his back tighten. Her delicate beauty was almost overpowering.

“I have always had a great interest in flowers,” he said. “And a great curiosity about those of this region.”

She lowered her eyes and smiled again. “I must see to my other guests,” she said.

Peter stood in the doorway to the garden, watching her walk away. Her movements, accented by the
ao dai
, seemed to carry her away in an effortless gliding motion. He found himself watching her long after she had gone.

“Beautiful woman, isn't she?”

He turned to the sound of the gravelly voice that had come from his left. The man was in his early thirties, overweight and sweating. He had unruly brown hair that stuck out in tufts over his ears and a face that showed a love of alcohol. His tropical cord suit, though clean and pressed, looked as though it belonged to someone else, someone thinner.

“Yes, she is,” Peter said.

The man squinted at Peter, as though he needed glasses to see properly. “You new here, captain?” he asked.

“Yes. The name's Bently, Peter if you like.”

“Joe Morris, UPI,” he said, raising a glass of amber liquid in place of a handshake. “Where you from, Pete?”

“South Dakota,” Peter said. “And make it Peter, please.”

Morris made a face, quietly critical of the formality. His eyes squinted again. “Saw you with Wallace before. You one of his new spooks?”

Peter was forced to smile at the crassness of this sloppy, overweight man. “I'm assigned to Saigon.”

Morris snorted. “Bet he's got you working on the great Cao caper, hasn't he?”

Peter raised his own glass to his lips. “Am I supposed to know what that means, Mr. Morris?”

“Aw, come on,
Peter
. You call me Joe. And Cao is no big secret. He's the bogey man, the local make-work project. If your boss ever catches him, he'll have to start investigating some of the real stuff around here. And nobody wants him to do that.”

“The
real
stuff, Joe?”

Morris squinted out across the room. “Oh, little things, like narcotics, and how easy they are to get here.” He turned back to Peter, trying to gauge his reaction.

Peter's face remained impassive. But the mention of narcotics had made his blood surge. Francesco's business was heroin, and this man wanted to investigate it, write about it. Perhaps he could use Morris to draw Francesco into the open. “If you think there's a drug problem, why don't you write about it?” he asked.

Morris snorted again. It appeared to be his method of laughter. “Tried to, Peter. Tried to many a time. The editors back home don't want to hear about it. They want a nice comic-strip war. Nice happy copy about the clean-cut American kids, fighting the sneering yellow horde.”

Peter turned to face the garden. “Your idea sounds interesting to me,” he said. “But then, what do I know about journalism?” He turned back and smiled at Morris. “Or narcotics,” he added.

Morris looked him up and down. “You never know. Maybe someday you'll come across something.”

“If I do I'll let you know,” Peter said, smiling again. “Then we might be able to help each other.”

Chapter 25

Molly Bloom sat behind her large teak desk, idly playing with a carved jade letter knife. She was listening far more closely than it appeared, as her man, Po, rattled on with his report in a flat North Korean dialect.

Suddenly she looked up, stopping him in midsentence. “The party at Colonel Duc's home,” she said in the inflection of someone raised in the south of Korea. “You had someone there?”

Po nodded, then watched as a smile made its way across Molly's soft delicate mouth. “It is so amusing,” she said, more to herself than Po. “They all gather together, eating and drinking and telling wonderful stories of war. And all the time, we are standing right beside them. Sometimes I wish I could tell them, Po. Just to see the looks on their faces.”

She held the letter knife between her two index fingers, still smiling, then lowered it to the desk.

Po stood silently, his short stocky body like some block of granite that came to life only on command.

“And our friend Captain Bently met this fool Morris there.”

“Yes, Luc-binh,” Po said, using the name Water Hyacinth, preferred by Molly's employees.

“And what did they talk about, Po?”

“Narcotics, Luc-binh.”

The smile on Molly's lips faded quickly. “That is very bad, Po. That news will not be happily received when I pass it on. And what did our young captain do earlier today?”

“He went to the Continental Palace Hotel, and met with Philippe Francisci and later with the man Auguste Pavlovi. I do not know what they talked about. But I will try to find out.”

Molly waved her hand. “No, that won't be necessary, Po. But I want you to have someone close to our young captain at all times. When possible, I want
you
to be close to him. Observe what he does, who he sees, especially anything involving this narcotics business. But don't interfere. Just let me know what is happening, so if it becomes necessary we can intercede.”

Po bowed his head. “Will the captain be here for dinner tonight?” he asked.

She nodded her head, her thoughts distant from her actions. She looked back at him, her mind in the present again. “Yes. I received a note this morning accepting my invitation. He will be here at eight. Please tell everyone that we will use the private dining room on the third floor.” She smiled to herself, her mind appearing to drift off again.

Po bowed and started to leave, but her voice stopped him. “And please send a messenger to me. I must send this information on to our friends.”

The private dining room was beyond even Peter's expectations. The long, narrow trestle table and heavy carved chairs were set before a floor-to-ceiling window that looked down on a lovely tropical garden. Along the walls fine Japanese and Korean ceramics were displayed on pedestals, interspersed with priceless figurines that Peter recognized as from the Jomon period, ranging between. 750 and 1000 B.C. The art in this room alone could ensure the comfort of Molly Bloom for the remainder of her life, he decided.

Across the long table, she smiled at him. He looked at her now, needing the diversion of her beauty, yet realizing he was wary of everything else about her.

“This is an evening I'll find difficult to forget,” he said. He paused and looked around the room, then down into the garden. “An American guest, wonderful European food, and all in a surrounding of beautiful oriental art.” He smiled at her. “It's really what this country is at this time. A blending of three cultures, each different yet, for the time, inseparable.”

“That's very good, Peter,” she said. “It's nice to meet an American who doesn't miss the subtleties of things. Unusual, as well.”

Peter leaned back in his chair, steepling his fingers before his face. “That's the second time you've done that. Offer surprise when you find an American who can observe the obvious.”

“Perhaps that's because it does surprise me.” She stood and walked to the window, slid back a panel of glass and stepped outside onto the narrow balcony.

Peter rose and followed her.

She was dressed in a dark-green dress, forsaking her favored
ao dai
, and the color seemed to match her eyes perfectly, making them seem like the deepest of jade. He stood next to her, looking down at the finely etched profile. “Have you met so few Americans who are capable of appreciating subtlety?' he asked.

The wind rose slightly, blowing her long black hair back, and she lifted her chin slightly to capture more of it against her face. “There have been a few,” she said. “But most others have been young boys, or old bores. And subtlety is always wasted on either.”

She turned to him, keeping her eyes on the garden, then allowing them to rise slowly until they met his. “You, for example, have been subtle enough not to ask about my rather unusual name. With most others that question would arise within the first few minutes.”

“But I have been tempted,” Peter said.

She turned back to the garden below. “Yes, but that is the ultimate in subtlety. Understanding when not to speak about something.”

“In that case, I shall ask you to tell me about it immediately,” he said.

She laughed. It was a beautiful laugh, he decided. Not the normal giggle orientals seemed to misuse as laughter. “Very well. Since you're determined to prove me wrong, I will tell you.” She turned and walked the length of the narrow terrace, then turned back to face him.

He was able to see all of her now, and thought that was what she preferred for the moment, allowing the full effect of her beauty to dominate his thoughts.

“My name, Molly Bloom, is something people often find strange, since I am a Eurasian woman who spent most of her youth in Korea. The few well-read people I meet—a number that seems to grow smaller with each passing year—assume my father was a great admirer of James Joyce. Actually I doubt he ever thought much about Joyce, and I'm reasonably certain he never read him. My father was an Englishman of mixed ancestry. His father was Jewish, his mother an Irish Catholic, and both of those paternal grandparents were long dead when I was born. My mother was Korean, and she too died at the instant of my birth. It seems death has always played a very large part in my life. Perhaps that's why I've always been fascinated by it.

“My name, in fact, came from this combination of deaths. My father was badly stricken by the death of my mother, and decided he could not bear a Korean name in the house because it would remind him of her. I was, therefore, given the name Molly after my paternal grandmother, who, of course, was also dead. Actually, I always thought the name was appropriate for an Irish Catholic Korean Jew, whose father was a British citizen.” She stopped and laughed softly, as if enjoying the ridiculous complexity of her own heritage.

“I've always thought my ancestry was confsing,” Peter said. “Yours makes it seem mundane. But it must have been difficult for you. Orientals aren't known for their tolerance of religious or racial mix.”

“Religion presented something of a problem, at least for my maternal grandparents. My mother had been raised as a Buddhist, and combined with the Jewish and the Catholic, that gave me ancestral roots in three of the world's five major religions. Since that was the case, my father decided I should be raised in none of them, but rather be allowed to choose my own when I matured. Being thus spared religious training as a child, along with all the attendant fears, taboos, prejudice and intimidation, I found, upon becoming an adult, that I needed no religion at all. That was greatly frowned upon by all concerned, and to a large extent still is. But I've been frowned upon for one thing or another for most of my twenty-five years. This one additional frown has had little effect on me.”

Peter moved closer, closing the distance between them. “How did an Irish Catholic Korean Jew happen to spend most of her youth in Korea? I would think life would have been much easier for you elsewhere.”

“It's quite simple, really. My father was in the British foreign service. He met my mother in England, where I was born. Then, after the end of World War II, he was assigned to Korea, where—as he often said—he helped maintain British influence among the world's lesser beings.”

“A fairly common British attitude,” Peter said.

“I don't think he really meant it. Just felt he had to say it. He was a nice man who drank too much, and on the day before my sixteenth birthday he died from a touch of liver, as his British physician put it. Actually he committed suicide. He just chose to do it slowly with Scotch, rather than in one of the more traditional and less dignified ways.” Molly looked back into the garden. “I didn't mind really. I knew he was much happier dead, even if there was nothing beyond the grave. Life had been an endless torment for him, a series of failures, disappointments, losses, all of which he was much better off without.” She turned back and smiled coyly. “It did present a problem for me, however, since it placed me in the hands of my Korean grandparents, who were forced to deal with a maturing young woman who had been raised without any concept of custom or tradition, be it British or Korean.” She laughed, as if remembering her grandparents' despair.

“They struggled with that problem for two years without any success whatsoever, then settled it rather abruptly by packing me off to university in your country.” The coy smile returned; the voice took on a note of solemnity. “And there I fell into a life of sin and became the woman you see before you now.” She tossed her hair and laughed, then looked back, her deep-green eyes flashing with her own enjoyment.

“And, of course, you won't tell me how you happened to buy the Room of a Thousand Mirrors,” Peter said.

“Why, I happened to buy it with money, Peter.” She laughed again. “Another story for another time. Perhaps when I know you better. Perhaps not.”

He closed the distance between them, allowing his size to dwarf her. Her eyes showed no intimidation. “There are some who say you work for the Korean CIA, did you know that?” His voice was soft, amused.

“The KCIA, how intriguing,” she said, smiling up at him.

“Others insist it's the VC.”

“Oh, the Viet Cong, even better.”

“Then, of course, there are those who insist you simply have your own little criminal enterprise.”

“And which do you think, Peter? All of the above, none of the above, or am I simply a poor orphan child struggling to make her way in a cruel and devious world?”

“The last one sounds very good, but the least likely,” he said.

She lowered her eyes and shook her head. “The military has destroyed your sense of romance, Peter. I rather like the last explanation. It casts me in the role of the beautiful but wayward waif, who can now be redeemed by the good and true American officer.” She laughed again. “Tell me, Peter. Are there any secrets in your life, anything you're hiding away from the world? If I searched would I find out what it was?”