The Corsican (49 page)

“Only those who interest me, Peter,” she said. She was still turned toward him, and her eyes glistened with the pleasure of her own word game.

“And I interest you?” he asked. “Even though I Jack subtlety?”

She leaned back, then looked out the window at the passing traffic. “There are many levels of subtlety in this region, Peter. And people can live here for years without ever understanding them all.” She turned back to him, her face soft, contemplative. “It's part of the culture. People mask their feelings, their beliefs, even what they are. And they expect others to do the same. So they watch carefully, trying to see what is behind the mask of another. It's a necessary practice here, one you should try to cultivate yourself.” She looked away again, wishing she could say more, knowing it would be an offense to Buonaparte to do so.

Peter studied her for a moment. It was the first time he had seen her veneer soften. He thought of the man who had seemed to follow him. Perhaps his own mask was now being probed. He wondered if Francesco would be foolish enough to do that himself, or if he would use someone else.

He smiled. “Is that why you keep such a close watch on people? To see behind the masks?” He watched her eyes, looking for some reaction.

“Perhaps,” she said. Her voice was flip, her eyes offered nothing. “Or perhaps I'm just an inquisitive woman.”

An hour later, seated on the deck of the floating restaurant, Peter felt relaxed for the first time since leaving Lin. He stared across at Molly as she studied the menu, wondering what it was about her that made him uneasy, unsure of himself.

“You look suddenly very thoughtful, Peter,” Molly said from across the table.

“I was thinking about masks.” He looked about him. The Japanese lanterns hanging along the deck of the restaurant gave it a magical quality, the gently flowing river, its filth hidden by the night, a sense of peace. “A friend told me recently that everything in this country, in this war, is an illusion. That it appears to be one thing, but is actually another. This place seems almost a caricature of that idea.” He motioned with his head toward the river. “It looks so beautiful. Dark and peaceful. Moving by very gently. But I've seen it in daylight and it's filthy.” He gestured again toward the shore. “From here, with the linen tablecloths and the hanging lanterns, everything seems in perfect harmony. We don't see the filthy docks, or the squalid fishing boats. And certainly not the pitiful tin shacks beyond them, and the thousands of people there. Hungry, frightened, desperate, hopeful. Mostly hopeful, I think, because other people promise them hope where there is none. Not for them, anyway. Perhaps for their children, or their grandchildren, but probably not even for them.”

Molly leaned back and studied the thoughtfulness behind his eyes. “That's true of most of the world, Peter. The people who control it see to that. It gives them someone to dominate.”

Peter rubbed his chin with his thumb and index finger. “You sound like a man I knew as a child. He believed that every man, every family, was its own country, and he rejected all others that were imposed on him.”

“He sounds like a very wise man.”

“I learned a great deal from him as a child.”

“Not as an adult?”

“I'm afraid I missed that opportunity.”

The waitress, a young Vietnamese dressed in a black vest and pants, came to their table. She bowed quickly and offered a seemingly shy
“Chao, dai uy”
to Peter, then turned and offered a silent bow to Molly. “You want order now?” she asked in English.

Peter smiled, nodded, and spoke to her in Vietnamese, praising her English.

“Toi hic tieng Anh,”
she said, giggling—I am studying English. “But not so good yet,” she added in English.

“Much better than most Americans speak your language,” Peter said.

Molly noted the gentle tone of Peter's voice, the genuineness of his interest. It reminded her of Buonaparte, the way he dealt with those who served him.

For appetizers they ordered a dish of
tom kho
, dried shrimp, and
ca thu
, dried fish, each garnished with
ot
, crimson hot peppers, that required an ample amount of wine. As a main course Peter chose
thit kho nuoc dua
, pork in coconut milk, served on a bed of herb-flavored rice. Molly ordered
cha gio
, paper-thin rice-flour dough wrapped around onions, mushrooms, beaten egg, bean threads and meat, then deep-fried and dipped in a spicy
nuoc nam
sauce before eating.

After a dessert of French cheese and durians, a foul-smelling but delicious fruit, they ordered brandy and a strong Vietnamese tea.

“That was a delicious meal, Molly,” Peter said. “Every bit as good as your own kitchen.”

“How did you enjoy the durians?” she asked. “The people of the region believe they have the ability to restore sexual vigor.”

He laughed softly. “Is that why you recommended them?”

“Purely informational, Peter.”

He leaned forward, watching her eyes again. “Every time I see you, I seem to find something different,” he said. “How many masks does Molly Bloom wear?”

Her eyes remained steady, serious. “It's as your friend said, Peter. No one here is what he appears to be. You should remember that with whomever you deal.”

“I shall,” Peter said. “Starting with you.”

It was ten o'clock when Francesco made his way along the dank narrow tunnel to the carved-out chamber that Lin used as a command post. He was tired and sweating when he dropped into the canvas folding chair across the table from where Lin sat.

“How long have you been here now? In Southeast Asia,” Lin asked.

“Since '46, my dear Cao,” Francesco said, mopping his face and neck with a handkerchief.

“Twenty years and still you haven't gotten used to the climate. How sad for you.”

Francesco's eyes flashed across the desk with a mixture of amusement and dislike. “It would help if I didn't have to come through a tunnel practically on my hands and knees,” he said.

“The tunnels are high enough. You could almost stand, my friend,” Lin said.

“Yes, that would amuse you, wouldn't it? It would also amuse the little pets you keep tied in those holes in the ceiling.”

“Are you afraid of little snakes?” Lin asked.

“Only when they bite me before I can bite them,” he said.

Hand to mouth, Lin began to laugh softly. “You must admit it's a wonderful defense system. Especially against those wonderfully tall Americans.”

“Corsicans are tall too,” Francesco said.

“Yes, aren't they?” Lin's eyes hardened, but only for a moment. “But you're a valuable Corsican.”

“You asked to see me,” Francesco said, impatient now with Lin's gamesmanship. “I assume it's about the heroin. It will be here at the end of the month. Delivery direct into Tan Son Nhut.”

“That is good. But it is not why I asked you to meet me.” Lin leaned forward, forearms on the table, eyes hard again. “Why are you following Captain Bently? You did follow us after we left the Street of Flowers.”

Francesco smiled, but only with his mouth. “Ahh, I should have known you would discover me.”

“That's the price one pays for incompetence,” Lin said. “Now why?”

“Because Peter Bently is not Peter Bently. His name is Pierre Sartene. He is Buonaparte Sartene's grandson. And that makes him very dangerous to me. I intend to kill him, Cao.”

“No, you won't, Francesco. He is being cultivated, and he is going to be very useful to me. If you're right, and this nonsense about his being Sartene's grandson is true, he is going to be even more useful than I hoped. Now tell me how you developed this fairy tale.”

“It's no fairy tale, my dear Cao.” Francesco sneered. “Like you, I have friends who have access to information. When you told me his name I became concerned. I contacted my friends and saw what they call his personnel file. His supposed father, Matthew Bently, was an OSS officer who served here. I knew the man. He worked with us in Vientiane. He had no wife. No son. But when I saw Pierre, I knew. I have not seen him since he was twelve. But still I knew. Buonaparte sent him away. I always thought to friends in Corsica or France. But now I know he sent him with Bently. There's no question. And there's no question I have to kill him. If I don't, he will kill me.”

“Why should he kill you, of all people?”

“Don't be stupid, Cao. You know I killed his father. He's Corsican. He won't rest until he kills me.”

Lin placed a cigarette in a carved bone cigarette holder and lit it. “Don't be a fool. Peter Bently is no more Corsican than I am. He's a spoiled American who's more concerned about his sex life than anything else. And what if he does find out? What is he going to do, chase you to Hanoi?”

“He's not bound by the agreement with Buonaparte. And blood is blood. You don't know about these things.”

Lin jumped up behind the desk. “Don't presume to tell me what I don't know. What I know is that you won't touch him until I'm finished with him. He's an intelligence officer, one of those fools who are supposed to find me. And I have arranged to know what he is doing. Not only does that protect me, but it also gives me a chance to learn things valuable to us.”

“Like his work with the man Morris, who worked with that other American fool, Constantini?”

“That too,” Lin said. “And anything else he may talk about. And believe me, he will talk. So you won't touch him. Not until I'm finished with him.”

“That I don't promise,” Francesco said.

“Then promise yourself this. Whatever you do to him, I will have done to you.”

Francesco glared across the chamber. He was being asked to risk his life, to let the Sartenes satisfy their vendetta. It was something he would never agree to. He forced a smile. “As you wish, Cao,” he said.

Chapter 33

The last light of day hung over the city, a mixture of muted, changing colors that seemed to linger in the sky just beyond the old colonial rooftops, as though unwilling to surrender to the night. The side streets were empty now, most people taking time for an evening meal, moments with their families, or in the case of the Americans; another long lonely night in a Saigon bar.

The day had been brutally hot, and now, for the first time, the temperature had dropped below a hundred. The empty, heat-soaked streets appeared to breathe a sigh of relief that was almost audible. Or so it seemed to Peter as he walked them, trying to offer some exercise to legs that had been stuffed behind a desk all day. Even in the lingering heat the effort was worthwhile.

Three weeks had passed—strange weeks for Peter, a mixture of lethargy and excitement in combination such as he had never known. The work side had been dreary, marked by only one success, an NVA major, furnished by his grandfather's Mua tribesmen, and met with an excitement bordering on the ridiculous from Wallace. But the colonel had recovered quickly, and had demanded progress on the Cao investigation. That, in itself, also approached the absurd. Reports came in several times a week identifying Cao as everything from a waiter in a Plantation Road restaurant to an outcast monk living near the Saigon docks. Peter had gradually become convinced that Cao was either several VC agents using a common code name, or an imaginary figure created by the Viet Cong to keep his unit running in time-wasting circles.

But it wasn't only Cao. His private search for Francesco's drug connections had gone nowhere either. The time he had spent in the seedier drug-related bars had produced nothing.

He had been to every corner of the sprawling Tan Son Nhut base; had checked every plane arriving from Vientiane under the guise of watching for infiltrating VC. If heroin was there, and if more was coming in, he simply could not find it. And if it was going out, he had no idea how, or who was arranging the shipments. There simply was no “long silver train,” none that he could locate at any rate. And the other comic-book phrase, the “green vulture,” was even more elusive.

He had talked to Morris about it and the newsman had simply shaken his head, insisting it sounded like typical GI lingo, hackneyed and trite enough to be real, but nothing he had ever heard. He had sought an outside source, someone who knew Francesco Canterina, but had found the man was a mystery to all his normal contacts. Peter only hoped that the questions would draw Francesco out.

He tried to push it all from his mind, something he had been attempting daily with greater frequency. Each day seemed to blend into one endless flow of khaki-clad bodies moving in and out of the base, offering nothing, proving nothing, just existing within a framework of endless orders and procedures. God, the military was boring, he realized. He had escaped it all these years by his constant training. But once that training was over, once there was no more that was new to learn, it all became one endless banality that would threaten the patience of the retarded. It was no wonder career military people looked forward to war. At least then there was a purpose to it all. Unless you were stationed with the headquarters paper merchants, as he was now.

His mouth had grown dry, either from the heat or the realization of how bored he was. At least the evenings had been good. Increasingly, over the past weeks, he had found himself waiting for his work day to end so life could begin. What a dreary fact it was. It made him understand the bars of Tu Do Street, the sad young prostitutes in their garish costumes, crudely offering minutes of release in comical pidgin English. Suddenly they were desirable, even to men who would find them otherwise repulsive.

But he had escaped that. The one saving grace of the entire experience. His evenings had been filled with Lin. Or on days when she could not excuse herself from Duc's home, evenings at the Room of a Thousand Mirrors, and occasional conversations with Molly. He thought of Molly, walking now. Odd, he told himself. Without question the most physically beautiful woman he had ever known. And without question the most disquieting. She was far too interested in him, and the interest seemed professional.