Opium (20 page)

Baptiste shrugged, and Jean-Marie looked annoyed and puzzled.

“He's sick. Liver fluke. I told him he should be more careful what he eats.”

“Putain
!' Baptiste‚ said.

“Look, what do you want,
ami
? I have to get going. If you want to see the boss, he's home, in bed.” He slammed the cockpit door shut.

“Wait!' Baptiste‚ shouted and slapped on the Perspex with the flat of his hand.

Jean-Marie waved him away. The Cessna's propeller turned slowly, then thrummed into life. Baptiste backed off.

“Well fuck you, then!' Baptiste shouted, and walked away.

***

The runway was still under several inches of water from the previous day's rains, and the Cessna threw a spray of water into the air behind it, like a speedboat. Finally it lifted into the air, the morning sun glinting on the fuselage. Baptiste shielded his eyes, watched it bank towards the south east.

“I tried to warn you, Jean-Mar.”

There was a bright flash, followed by a blossoming of orange flame. It left behind a black smudge of smoke in the sky. Baptiste watched a wing spiral into the Mekong. The reverberation of the explosion washed through the trees with a sudden hot wind. There was silence over the aerodrome as the Air America pilots stopped their laughing chatter to look up at the sky in deathly hush.

Baptiste turned and strode back to the Packard. Am I ruthless enough for you now, Monsieur Bonaventure ... papa?

Chapter 36

T
HE monsoon had turned the streets to a slough of mud and garbage, chickens and water buffalo and pigs rooted for scraps in the drowned streets. There were splotches of red betel everywhere where the villagers had hacked out their lungs in the steamy weather.

Baptiste avoided Amicu's. He did not want to mix with the
milieu
today, of all days, and he did not want to talk to Bonaventure.

The White Rose was in a side street off Vientiane's main strip, signposted with a wagon wheel. It was dank and dingy, even in the middle of the day, and its mainly American clientele - off-duty CAT pilots, spooks , diplomats, a few engineers - sat around in little booths or on wicker chairs, drinking
Bia Lao
or smoking pot. Upstairs were a few tiny cubicles furnished with nothing but single beds.

At this time of the day there were no takers.

The girls in the White Rose were not like the hard cases at the Suck and Soda and he found their clumsy efforts to please almost poignant. Any of them would perform an impromptu strip for one dollar. A girl called Suzie approached him as he sat down. “You want to see show?' she said and flipped off her bikini pants and took the Gitanes out of his fingers. She placed it between the lips of her vagina and blew a smoke ring. She grinned at him, delighted with her own press.

Baptiste flipped a dollar note across the table and told her to go away. He returned his attention to the bottle of cognac on the table. He ignored the stares he was getting. He sensed the tension, heard some of the Americans talking in hushed voices about what had happened out at Wattay that morning.

Thunder rolled around the mountains.

He started when he saw Noelle. It was the last place he expected to see her. He could see by her face that she had heard the news. She flopped onto a chair, pale and sweating and with a dangerous look in her eyes.

“Noelle. What are you doing here?'

“Tell me you didn't do it,” she whispered.

“I didn't do it.” He could not hold her eyes. He emptied his glass and refilled it.

She lashed out, sending the glass across the floor with a sweep of her hand. “He was your
friend
!'

All conversation stopped. Everyone in the bar turned and stared; even Suzie, and she couldn't understand a word.

“You're embarrassing me,” he said. “Go home.”

“How much did you pay his mechanic to put the
plastique
on the plane?'

“You're not making any sense.”

“How could you do it? You're a monster!'

“Go home, Noelle.”

“I always knew you were a bastard. I never thought you were a murderer.”

“I said,
go home!
'

“What are you going to do? Hit a pregnant woman? Or perhaps you'll put some
plastique
under my bed tonight?'

He lost his temper. He leaned across the table and hissed at her: “You think this was my idea?'

She searched his face. '... Papa?'

“Of course your precious papa! I'm just his lap dog! Isn't that what you always wanted? You told me we couldn't run away from him. Well now you've got your way. I'm part of your cosy little family now!'

He watched her wilt. He could not believe she had not worked it out for herself; or perhaps it was easier to blame him for her father's sins.

“Maybe you can sleep with your conscience, Baptiste, but I can't.” She looked around at everyone in the bar. “A word of advice, boys. As soon as my husband leaves, you'd better check under your chairs.”

She left. He went after her, caught her arm as she was about to clamber into a
siclo
. “What the hell are you doing?'

“Let go of me!'

“Get in the car. You'll get soaked!'

“Let go!' She lashed out at him with her nails and he threw up a hand to protect his eyes. She kicked him, then pushed him with both hands. Unsteady after too much cognac, he slipped in the mud and went down.

She stood over him in the rain. “Stay away from me, Baptiste!'

She struggled into the back of the
siclo
, soaked, crazy, pregnant. He watched her until she was out of sight down the muddy street. She was still screaming things at him. How did everything get so fucked up? He went back into the White Rose and bought another bottle of cognac.

***

By the time Noelle got to her father's villa the rain was slamming down in sheets, and the courtyard was ankle deep. She slipped over in the mud, struggled back to her feet and hammered on the door.

Tao Koo gaped at her. She pushed past him leaving muddy footprints on the polished marble. She pushed her wet hair out of her eyes. “Where is he?' she said.

“Noelle!' Bonaventure ran down the stairs, his face white. “Noelle, what's wrong? What has happened? My God, you are soaked through!'

“I've left him,” she said.

“Fetch towels,” he said to Tao Koo. The houseboy hurried off. Bonaventure came towards her, arms wide, but she backed away.

“I've left Baptiste,” she repeated.

“Now? But the baby ...”

“He killed Jean-Marie. He was responsible.”

Bonaventure took a deep breath. Noelle, calm down.”

“He said you ordered him to do it.”

So it was true, she thought. She could tell by his face.

Tao Koo returned with the towels. “You'd better get out of those wet clothes,” Bonaventure said. “The baby ...”

“It's true, isn't it?'

“I don't know anything about this,” he said. “I swear it.”

She wanted to believe him; all her life she had shut her ears to the rumours about him. She knew the kind of business he was in. But she did not want to believe he was capable of something like this.

Bonaventure took the towels from Tao Koo and sent him away. When they were alone, he held them out for her. “Please, Noelle. You'll make yourself sick. You must get out of these wet clothes, you can use the bathroom upstairs.”

“I'm not going back to Baptiste.”

“Let's talk about this later.”

“I mean it.”

“Look at you, you have mud all over you. You must look after this baby.”

“What happened to Jean-Mar?'

“I don't know. Nobody knows.”

He looked so calm, so reasonable, so civilized, with his grey beard and white linen suit. Those soft, grey eyes.

“They say Francisci's mechanic is missing. They've looked for him all over Vientiane. The Cessna blew up in mid-air. In mid-air, papa. Planes don't explode for no reason.”

“You know he was sleeping with one of Rattakone's daughters? Perhaps he made his own trouble.”

“Rattakone?'

“That's one possibility. Francisci also carried guns and grenades for the Americans upcountry. You have explosives on a plane, it's a risk. Jean-Marie knew that.”

“Did he understand the risk of crossing Rocco Bonaventure?'

“What do you take me for? A barbarian?' He threw the towels at her. “I'm your father! How dare you talk to me this way!'

The first contraction was so severe and so sudden that it took her breath away. She gasped and doubled over. Bonaventure had to grab her to prevent her from falling. “Noelle!'

For almost a minute she tried to breathe through the dizzying pain. When it passed, it left her shocked and light-headed. But the waters have not broken, she told herself. What's happening?

Bonaventure shouted to Tao Koo to call for the doctor.

She realised her father had his arms around her, and she pushed him away. “I'm all right,” she said. The pain had taken the fight out of her. She slumped into a chair. When the baby comes, let it be a girl, she prayed. There's no man in the world worth a tinker's damn.

***

There were no more pains. She changed out of her wet clothes, and her father's
boyesse
brought her a dry blouse and a
pao sin
. Barefoot, and feeling icy calm, she padded along the hall and found him in his study.

He was wearing the half moon spectacles that the doctor had prescribed for his failing eyesight. A thick leather-bound ledger was open on the desk in front of him. He put down his pen and came around the desk.

“How are you feeling?'

“I'm all right,” she said, and ignored his fussing. She eased herself slowly into a chair.

He stood over her. “That was a crazy thing to do!'

“I was angry.”

“You could have had the baby right there in the street!'

“Sit down, papa. Please.”

Reluctantly he settled back behind his desk. “You look terrible. I am going to call the doctor.”

“I'm not made of porcelain. The local women have babies all the time and they don't have doctors fussing around them all the time.”

There was an uneasy silence.

“Have you had another fight with your husband?'

She shook her head. Had he not listened to a word she had said? “A man is dead, papa. Doesn't that mean anything to you?'

“I cannot get sentimental over someone I do not even know. Besides, one thing has nothing to do with the other. I told you, I had nothing to do with it, and I cannot believe Crocé did either. Do you really intend to leave him or are you just trying to frighten him?'

“I cannot stay married to a man like that. He said you put him up to it.”

He sighed and shook his head. “Little princess, I'm getting old. I'm not like I was when I was younger, had to win at everything, make more money all the time. Now I just want to live to see my grandchildren play on my lawn. It was certainly no idea of mine to cause trouble for myself in Vientiane by killing young pilots who are of no consequence to me anyway.”

The rain drummed on the banana palms outside the window.

“I am a good Catholic, and I do not believe in divorce. Besides, you have a baby now. You should stay with your husband, and make the best of it. That is what marriage is.”

Noelle was silent for a long time. The fan blade overhead stirred the air like warm treacle. Her face looked ghostly in the storm light.

Finally she said: “Can you ask Tao Koo to drive me home, please?'

Chapter 37

N
OELLE woke suddenly in the middle of the night, the bed soaked. She knew straight away what had happened. It was starting. She felt beside her in the bed for her husband but he wasn't there.

She called for Chao, but the servants had all gone to bed for the night. She pushed aside the mosquito netting, lit the kerosene lantern and struggled upright. And the first pain hit her.

It was bad, even worse than the phantom that had come on earlier in her father's villa. It was like an electric shock, just under her navel, and stabbed around the small of her back, leaving her breathless. When it was over she lay there, terrified. She had never experienced or even imagined pain quite that bad.