“I don’t pay,” Bay answered, “until your merchandise is safely delivered.”
“So I guess you’re stuck with me.”
Now Nicholai lit a cigarette of his own and sat back, enjoying the relative cool of the early morning and the streaking red shafts of daylight coming over the hills. Young boys were already herding buffalo down to the river for a drink and a bath, and women were collecting buckets of the muddy water to bring back to their village.
They waited twenty minutes for the ferry to return from the other side of the river, then the heavy truck carefully drove onto the floating platform. Thick ropes on the ferry ran through large eyebolts and then out to the harnesses of elephants, one on each side. A young Lao mahout kicked his elephant in the flank and the two animals started across the river, pulling the ferry along with them.
The ferry came to a shuddering halt on the opposite bank. Two large sheets of corrugated tin were thrown down for traction, and the truck rumbled up the slope and onto a dirt road that cut up through the forest.
They climbed for five hours, slowly making their way up the switchbacks into the mountains, where limestone cliffs punctuated the otherwise green hills. Fields of dry mountain rice broke up the jungle, while other scorched patches told of primitive slash-and-burn agriculture. Men, women, and children – most of them wearing loose-fitting black jerseys, baggy black trousers, and black turbans – were out on the burned fields, hoeing away the debris and getting the rich red soil ready for planting. Small, shaggy ponies grazed the edges of the burned fields.
“Who lives here?” Nicholai asked, risking conversation.
More awake, Bay was a little more gregarious. “The Meo. They came down from Sichuan two thousand years ago.”
Nicholai saw the rice fields, and small patches of potatoes and other vegetables. Then, as they climbed higher, he noticed a different crop.
Poppies.
“The Meo are also florists?” Nicholai asked dryly.
Bay chuckled. “The Viet Minh used to control the opium crop, now we do. I guess it’s caused some resentment.”
An hour later the road leveled onto a valley and then a broad plateau that led into a town – mostly wooden shacks and a few shops clustered around a few brick-and-tile buildings and an enormous colonial structure that looked as if it had been some kind of administrative center.
“The old French governor’s palace,” Bay said.
“Where are we?” Nicholai asked.
“Xieng Khouang,” Bay answered. “It’s about the only town up here. The French built it back in the 1880s, then the Japs took it. When they got chased out, the Pathet Lao had it for a while, until the Meo helped the French take it back.”
“Why did they do that?”
“Money,” Bay answered. “Why does anyone do anything?”
They drove through town without stopping. A mile outside of town they came to a large airstrip that had recently been bulldozed out of the terrain. An American-made DC-3 with French military markings sat on the strip, guarded by French paratroopers. Other soldiers, along with Meo men, loaded crates from trucks and carts into the cargo hold.
“This you didn’t see,” Bay warned.
He got out of the truck. Nicholai slid out behind him and followed him across the dirt landing strip to where a paratroop captain stood, supervising the loading. The captain saw Bay Vien, walked toward him, held him by the shoulders, and kissed him on both cheeks.
Then he noticed Nicholai. “Captain Antoine Signavi.”
“Michel Guibert.”
They shook hands.
Signavi stood just a shade shorter than Nicholai. He wore crisp camouflage gear, jump boots, and the vermilion beret of a paratrooper. “I have some beer on ice. About the best I can do up here.”
He led them just off the airstrip to a canvas canopy with a portable table and three stools. An orderly reached into an ice chest, came out with three bottles of Tiger beer, opened them, and set them on the table.
Signavi held up his bottle. “Santé.”
“Santé,” Nicholai echoed.
“Three more weeks,” Signavi said, “and this runway will be a river of mud. Unusable. The road up here too. Very difficult. I’ll be glad to be back in Saigon.”
He removed his beret, exposing a thick head of black hair.
“I have some cargo,” Bay said, “to put on this flight. It’s okay?”
“Sure,” Signavi answered. “We’re light this trip.”
“And two additional passengers?”
“You and you?” Signavi asked.
Bay nodded.
Signavi looked hesitant.
“In my area of business,” Nicholai said, “discretion is of the utmost importance. I see nothing and I say less.”
“I’ll vouch for him,” Bay said.
“You can understand,” Signavi said, “that this is all… sensitive. We’re fighting a war, someone has to pay for it, and the Reds in Paris are unwilling to do it. So one holds one’s nose and does what is necessary.” He jutted his chin toward the opium being loaded onto the plane.
Nicholai shrugged. “Who am I to judge?”
“Indeed,” Signavi said, his nuanced tone leaving no doubt that while he was going to tolerate this gunrunner for practical purposes, he nevertheless found it distasteful.
Nicholai wasn’t willing to allow the implied insult to pass. He asked, “Signavi, is that a Corsican name?”
“Guilty,” Signavi said. “Napoleon and I, we both sought our futures in the French army. We take off first thing in the morning. I’ll arrange beds for tonight. I hope you will both join me for dinner.”
Nicholai never ceased to marvel at the French ability to dine well under any circumstances. Here, at a secret airstrip in the middle of the Laotian highlands, emerged a lunch of vichyssoise, cold roasted guinea fowl, and a very acceptable salad made from local greens, all washed down with a decent white wine.
Dining accomplished, Signavi led them to a large barracks tent surrounded by concertina wire.
His proximity sense woke him.
He lay still and listened to the sharp click-click as the wirecutters snipped the fence, then to the sound of a man crawling.
Bay Vien was sound asleep on his bed by the tent wall.
Nicholai dove just as the blade slashed through the tent. He knocked Bay off the bed onto the floor, then got up and went through the tent door.
The would-be assassin was already running back toward the fence.
A klaxon sounded and a searchlight swept the ground. Nicholai heard Alsatian dogs bark and then one burst across the stockade ground after the man. The man leapt for the fence and became entangled in the concertina wire. He twisted in the wire, a grotesque acrobatic act, as the machine-gun bullets hit him.
Signavi, clad in satin pajamas, a pistol in his hand, ran out, and a moment later Bay Vien came out of the tent and looked at the corpse hanging from the fence.
“Viet Minh,” Bay said. He turned to Nicholai. “You saved my life, Guibert.”
“Just looking out after my interests,” Nicholai answered. He walked back into the tent and lay back down.
Bay came in. “I’m in your debt,” he said.
“Forget it.”
“I won’t,” Bay said. “It’s a matter of honor.”
Nicholai understood.
103
COLONEL YU KNOCKED on the door of Liu’s office and received permission to enter.
Liu looked up from the stack of papers on his desk. “Yes?”
“The Viet Minh agent who was supposed to meet Hel was killed.”
“Ah.”
“So Hel didn’t make the rendezvous.”
“Obviously.”
“There’s a report,” Yu said, “unverified, that he went with the Binh Xuyen.”
“Stay on top of it,” Liu ordered.
Yu left the room deeply troubled. If Hel was with the Binh Xuyen, he was either a prisoner or had willingly betrayed him.