Opium (6 page)

“Do they? How do you know this?'

“Look at you.”

He shook his head. “You should be ashamed, manipulating your father like that.”

“I mean it. I think he could be good for me.”

He sighed. “Very well. I cannot pretend I am happy about this,” he said. “But if there is one thing I have learned with you,
chèrie
, it is that you are a very stubborn woman. I think you are misguided, and blinded by your own passions. But if you are determined to go ahead with this foolhardy union, then I suppose I had better talk to this ... gentleman. You have my permission to invite him to dinner tomorrow night. Now if you do not mind, I shall retire to my study and sulk.”

After he had gone, Noelle sat for a long time listening to the rain falling on the roof. She had not anticipated that he would capitulate so easily. It made her uneasy.

near Ban Me Thuot,

Central Highlands, Vietnam

There were no radio beacons in Laos and the maps they used had been drawn up by the French administration back in the twenties and were sometimes inaccurate by as much as fifty miles. A pilot had to learn to navigate his plane by dead reckoning. But it was a hazardous way of life and even the Catholics among them wore little jade Buddhas around their necks as good luck charms along with their Saint Christophers. They needed all the luck they could get.

Baptiste searched for a break in the gauzy white clouds, then glanced at the altimeter. Eight thousand ASL. He dared not go lower. The Cessna lurched in the monsoon. Like flying through a milk bottle, he thought.

Finally he glimpsed a patch of dark green jungle through the clouds and dived towards it. The verdant green forest was wreathed in mists of wispy cloud, savagely beautiful. The
montagnards
who lived there still used bows and poisoned arrows. Not a good place to get lost.

Another flurry of rain spattered across the windshield.

He peered around anxiously for the tell-tale smudge of the smoke beacon that would give him his final bearings on Ban Me Thuot. After five minutes he was ready to give up and take a compass bearing for home when he saw a skein of dark smoke perhaps five miles away on his starboard side. The south west monsoon had carried him further north than he had anticipated.

He banked sharply, came in low. He saw the thatched roofs of Ban Me Thuot in the distance; below him was the airstrip, a dirt track three hundred yards long, carved out of the raw jungle. A truck was parked at the far end of the strip and he saw a man in a startling white T-shirt waving him in.

He circled once, checked the air sock at the far end of the runway, and lined up for the descent.

***

The Cessna bounced once, before settling onto the strip. The wheels skidded in the mud. He prayed there was no bog that would clutch at the wheels and send the Cessna over on her spine. But his luck held. The plane splashed to a stop fifty yards from the tarpaulin-covered truck.

The man in the T-shirt leaped into the truck and roared through the mud to meet him. Baptiste cut the engine and climbed out. He waved to the driver, a man he knew only as Hung.

But Hung did not wave back. He did not even smile. He looked scared.

Baptiste ran back to the Cessna, found the revolver hidden under the pilot's seat. But when he turned around a dozen ARVN soldiers leaped from the tailboard of the truck holding carbines and sub-machine guns.

Putain de merde!

He dropped the revolver in the mud and raised his hands.

Colonel Tran van Ky stepped forward, his own revolver still holstered, his hands on his hips. “Monsieur Crocé?' he said.

“How did you know?'

“These gentlemen told us to expect you.” He indicated Hung and his two companions. They were soaked and miserable.

“How did you know about the drop?'

“I keep my ears to the ground.” He sauntered over to the cockpit and peered into the back. “What sort of cargo are you carrying?'

“Toys for orphans and medical supplies for the poor.”

Ky smiled. He liked a man with a sense of humour. “I imagine there is a certain amount of contraband in there also. Would that be correct, monsieur?'

Baptiste groaned: Of course. Bonaventure!

He kept a certain amount of gold under his seat for such occasions. “How much?' he said.

Ky shook his head. “Smuggling opium and offering graft to a member of the military are both considered very serious offences in the republic of Vietnam, Monsieur Crocé. You are under arrest.”

Chapter 8

Vientiane

N
OELLE found Jean-Marie at the Bungalow. He was sitting on the porch outside the dining room, staring at the rain dripping from the roofs of the kitchens and servant quarters. The green tangle of the garden looked sodden and forlorn.

“Noelle Bonaventure,” he said softly in greeting, and pulled at the cognac bottle he had cradled in his arms.

“Is it true?' she said.

Jean-Marie nodded.

“How?'

“He was arrested by the Vietnamese police yesterday afternoon. That's all I know. They impounded the plane.” He gave her a look of accusation. “That plane was everything we had. Everything.”

The broken ceiling fan laboured noisily on a broken blade. A few slow flies followed its journey.

“What's going to happen?'

“He's going to prison. Two tears. Five years. Who knows?
Les jaunes
can be real bastards when they want to be.”

Noelle could not imagine spending another two hours without seeing him. Five years was unthinkable. “There has to be some way to get him out. I'll talk to my father.”

Jean-Marie gave a hollow laugh and drained the cognac bottle. He tossed it towards the pile of old wine bottles stacked next to the chicken coop. He missed and it smashed on a broken toilet bowl that lay against the wizened trunk of a banyan tree.

“What's the matter?' Noelle said.

“You don't get it, do you? Do you think this was an accident?'

“Baptiste always said there were risks.”

“Risks? Sure, for people like us. But how is it your father never loses a plane then?'

She couldn't answer.

“Haven't you worked it out yet?'

“Worked it out?'

“Your father! Rocco arranged this. I warned Baptiste about you but he wouldn't listen to me. He thought he was so smart. I told him you were bad news!'

She remembered her father's easy capitulation the day before Baptiste was arrested.

Jean-Marie put his head in his hands. “I warned him to stay away from you!'

“Don't worry,” she said. “I'll get this sorted out.”

“How?'

“I'll find a way.”

***

She found him upstairs, in his study, sitting at his lacquered writing table,
en smoking
, the crushed velvet of his jacket worn at the sleeves from purple to silver grey. It was late afternoon. The crystal wall sconces threw a dull yellow glow over the teak floorboards and walls and made the gold embossed leather volumes of
Voyages dans l”Indochine
appear to glow on the bookshelves.

He looks the perfect French
gentilhomme
, she thought, a little roguish perhaps with the long silver grey hair and grizzled beard, but civilised, a man of sensibility. Not a man who would condemn another to incarceration in the black hell of a Vietnamese prison because he did not approve of him.

Yet what did she really know of her father's real nature? In all her twenty-two years she had never defied him before.

He looked up as she walked in and laid his fountain pen to one side. His expression changed swiftly from pleasure to concern. “What's wrong?' he said. “You're crying. What has happened?' He jumped to his feet and came around the desk. “Chèrie, what is the matter?'

He guided her to a chair. “Baptiste has been arrested.”

“Baptiste?'

“Baptiste Crocé. You know who I'm talking about.”

His voice became frosty. “Forgive me, but he and I are not on such intimate terms. What did he do to you?'

“He hasn't done anything. He was arrested at an airfield in the Central Highlands, on the other side of the border. The Vietnamese were waiting for him.”

“I see. I suppose his cargo was not legitimate?'

“Do you ever carry legitimate cargoes?'

He shrugged his shoulders. “Sometimes.” He rested his weight on the edge of the desk then leaned forward and raised her chin with the forefinger of his right hand. “So this is the reason for these red eyes?'

“I told you, I love him.”

He shrugged. She twisted her head away.

He got up and went to the window. It had stopped raining and the sun was flat on the plain, turning the Mekong into a ribbon of liquid platinum. Almost time for his
apéritif
. “They will imprison him, of course. That is usual. It is bad luck.”

She took a deep breath. “Did you have anything to do with this?'

“You think I organised this? Is this what you think of me?'

“Did you?'

“I am outraged that you could accuse me of such a thing.”

“Don't lie to me, papa.”

“And don't you dare to interrogate me! I would not lie to my own daughter!' I told you the other day, I was prepared to meet this man and talk to him, take his measure. Maybe then, if I thought he might hurt my little girl, then perhaps I would have done something.”

Noelle wanted to believe him. Perhaps Jean-Marie is wrong, she thought. But however this happened, I cannot let him languish inside a Saigon prison. “All right then, I believe you. So help me get him out.”

“Get him out?'

“You have friends in the Vietnamese government. You have told me about it. Use your influence, papa. Do it for me.”

He sighed. “You don't know what you're asking. Such a thing will not be easy.”

“You must be able to do something.”

He put his arms around her. “Is he really so important to you?' he whispered.

She placed her hands on top of his. “Please, papa.”

He thought about this for a long time. “Noelle. I have told you before, I think you have chosen poorly. This man will break your heart.” When Noelle did not reply, he added: “But it is your life. I will see what I can do. Next week I go to Saigon. I will make enquiries. I cannot promise anything.”

“Thank you, papa,” Noelle whispered. She got up and kissed him tenderly on the cheek.

“See, it is settled. Now come and have an
apéritif
with your papa.”

“Not now, I am too upset. I just want to be alone.”

“You will be down for dinner?'

“I don't think so.” She went out, closing the door gently behind her.

Bonaventure stared after her. Baptiste Crocé you must have the tongue of the devil to bewitch my daughter this way! But it hasn't done you any good, has it? I wonder what a few years in a Vietnamese prison will do for your good looks and your charm?

Saigon

A week later Rocco Bonaventure was once again enjoying a
vermouth cassis
on the terrace of the Continental Hotel with Lieutenant Colonel Tran van Ky. A woven bamboo canopy protected them from the torrential monsoon.

The drains were overflowing in the Tu Do and the tyres of the Renault and Peugeot taxis ploughed furrows through the water. “What happened to that pilot I told you about?' Bonaventure asked him over the din of the rain. “What was his name? Baptiste?'

“His case has not yet come before the courts. But opium smuggling is a very serious offence in Vietnam.”

“How long will he get?'

Ky raised the cognac to his lips and considered. “How long would you like?'

“The maximum,” Bonaventure said, and then the conversation moved on to other things.

Chapter 9

Hong Kong

October, 1960

T
HE blue and white globe of Pan Am Airlines glittered in the late afternoon sun as the Boeing 707 swooped down towards Kai Tak airport. The rumble of the Rolls Royce engines shook the grimy cocklofts and airless workshops in Mongkok just two hundred feet below, where immigrant Chinese hunched over their benches assembling cheap transistors and artificial flowers.