Satori

“Is that right?” Nicholai answered. He wondered what the ninja might have to say about it.

“Take it as a fact.”

And a warning, Nicholai thought.

They walked into a narrow strip of garden where several older men sat around two white wrought-iron tables. The men all wore white short-sleeved shirts and either white or light khaki loose-fitting trousers. A couple of them sported broad-brimmed hats for protection against the sun.

Nicholai knew that he was looking at L’Union Corse.

Mancini took off his jacket, draped it on the back of a chair, sat down, and gestured for Nicholai to do likewise.

“This is my newest guest,” Mancini said as Nicholai took a chair. “Michel Guibert.”

He introduced each of the five men – Antonucci, Guarini, Ribieri, Sarti, Luciani – each of whom offered a hand with a gruff nod. Mancini filled Nicholai’s glass with pastis. The men looked on as Nicholai took the carafe of water set on the table and poured some in to dilute his drink. Then he raised the glass, said, “Salut,” and sipped. His familiarity with the pastaga seemed to relax the group, who sat back in the chairs, drank, and took the sun.

“So,” Mancini said, “what brings you to Saigon?”

“Business,” Nicholai answered.

“How is your father?” asked Antonucci.

Antonucci looked to be in his early fifties, and was as skinny as Mancini was stout. But the deeply tanned forearms under his rolled-up sleeves looked like iron, and despite his casual but expensive clothes, the man looked like he could be a day laborer.

“He’s well,” Nicholai responded. “You know him?”

“We’ve done business,” Antonucci said. “In the past.”

“Well,” Nicholai said, raising his glass, “here’s to the future.”

They drank a round. Then Antonucci raised his glass toward Mancini and said, “To my new neighbor.”

Mancini explained to Nicholai. “After years of trying, I just managed to acquire the Majestic Hotel, next door to Antonucci’s nightclub.”

“Your nightclub?” Nicholai asked.

“La Croix du Sud,” Antonucci said, then added pointedly, “In the Corsican quarter, on the harbor. Where all the imports and exports come and go.”

“You’d like his club,” Mancini said to Nicholai. “One of those pleasures we talked about.”

“Come tonight,” Antonucci said.

“Tonight?” Nicholai asked.

Antonucci leaned across the table and looked Nicholai full in the face. “Tonight.”

A little while later, Mancini and Antonucci went out the back gate and strolled across the broad Opera Square. On the other side, the Saigon Opera House loomed in all its French colonial glory. The other Corsicans had drifted home. It was that hour, “the hour of the pipe,” and these longtime residents of Saigon had acquired many local habits.

“What do you think?” Mancini asked.

“Smart young man,” Antonucci said, pausing for a moment to relight his cigar. “Maybe we can make some money with him.”

They walked across the square, quiet now in the torpid hour before the cool of evening would bring out young lovers, old strollers, people looking for relaxation and those searching for excitement.

In his lifetime Antonucci had seen many things. He had started life as a shoeless shepherd, but soon decided that a life of barefoot labor and drudgery was not for him. So he hopped a freighter to Indochina, jumped ship in Saigon, and within two years turned the gaggle of girls he pimped into a prosperous brothel. He used those proceeds to buy the Croix du Sud, the Southern Cross, which turned a profit of its own but really served to launder the money he made with Mancini smuggling heroin and gold into Marseille.

They bought the heroin directly from the French army. Bay Vien bought the bulk of it, but La Corse purchased the surplus. The profits were enormous, even after the hefty cut that went to Bao Dai. They used the money to buy yet more clubs, restaurants, and hotels. Mancini had the Continental and now the Majestic, Luciani owned the Palace. It wouldn’t be long before the Corsicans had a monopoly on Saigon’s hosting business. Their children, or at least their grandchildren, would be restaurateurs and hoteliers instead of dope and currency smugglers.

It was a good life, and he had survived the French, then the Japanese, briefly the British (who were fools anyway), and then the French again. Now the French, desperate for allies, turned a blind eye to the heroin, and the Corsicans had forged a working relationship with the Binh Xuyen and Bao Dai.

All this could end if the Communists won and took over the country, but still Antonucci thought he could work out an accommodation with them. Asia was Asia, and life would go on as usual. Communist or no, men would still want women and money.

Corsica had been conquered by everybody – Greeks, Romans, Arabs, Turks, Normans, French, Germans – and the Corsicans were used to working out a way of living with all of them. It was a national trait, an innate talent.

But now the Americans were edging out the French, and that was a different story. Les amerloques, the “crazy Americans,” were impractical, puritanical, and moralistic. They would seek to dump Bao Dai and put in their own man, sweep the carpet clean.

And now this young Guibert had turned up and the rumor was that he had sold a shipment of stolen American arms to Bay Vien. “We should find out more about this Guibert. Use the Belgian dwarf, I can’t think of his name…”

“De Lhandes,” Mancini said. “Odd little fellow. But he seems to sniff out everything.”

“Useful.”

“Very useful.”

Guibert might be just what he claims to be, the heir to his family’s gunrunning business. But then again, perhaps he is an agent of French intelligence. The Deuxieme Bureau, SDECE, or perhaps the Surete. Or does he serve the Americans, as so much of the world seems to do these days? Maybe he is simply a young man on the make. In which case we can make some money together.

“I already did,” Mancini answered. “Even before he arrived. The dwarf says that he appears to be who he says he is. Bay Vien’s people say the same thing. I had his room searched while we were having pastaga.”

We shall see, Antonucci thought. He looked at Mancini and uttered the ancient words. “Per tu amicu.”

“Per tu amicu,” Mancini ritually responded.

For your friendship.

106

HIS ROOM HAD BEEN tossed.

Carefully and professionally, Nicholai observed, but tossed nevertheless. Before leaving the room he had plucked a hair from his head and placed it across two drawers on his bureau, and now the hair was gone.

It didn’t matter – they would find nothing they weren’t supposed to find.

Had Mancini ordered it? Probably, although it could have been the French, who had a veritable alphabet soup of police and intelligence services in Saigon, none of whom were known to be overly respectful of privacy.

And the Corsican mob expects my presence at La Croix du Sud tonight. For what purpose? To be grilled, seduced, observed, threatened, perhaps assassinated? Again, it didn’t matter -to complete his assignment he would have to do business in Saigon, and the Corsicans had made it very clear that he couldn’t do business in Saigon without doing business with them.

Leave it to later, he told himself. You have something else to do now.