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The saxophone player eyed him again.

“She’s just being friendly,” Nicholai said.

“She’ll get a beating if she gets any friendlier,” De Lhandes answered. “If you want a woman -”

“I don’t.”

The dwarf offered his hand. “Bernard De Lhandes, formerly of Brussels, now consigned to this gustatory backwater, where the charm of the women is in direct inverse ratio to the banality of the cuisine. By the salty tears of Saint Timothy, how a refined gourmand is expected to inflict a death from gluttony upon himself in this place I’ll never know. Although I try, I try.”

“Michel Guibert.” Nicholai lifted his glass. “Santé.”

“Santé.

“Comment ça va?”

“As well as can be expected,” the gnome huffed, “considering that I just dined – if one wishes to call it ‘dining’ – at Le Givral, and all I can say is that whoever conspired to commit the aioli sauce must have been born somewhere in the less enlightened regions of Sicily – presumably in some village whose benighted inhabitants are congenitally deprived of both taste buds and olfactory perception – as the balance, or rather the lack thereof, of the garlic and olive oil smacked of sheer barbarism.”

Nicholai laughed, which encouraged De Lhandes to continue his diatribe.

“The fact that I nevertheless managed to consume the entire boiled fish and a leg of lamb,” De Lhandes said, “the mediocrity of which would have brought tears of boredom to the eyes of a perpetual shut-in, is a testament to both my tolerance and my gluttony, the latter of which qualities I possess in far greater measure than the former.”

De Lhandes was pleasant company. A stringer for several wire services, he was based in Saigon to cover “the damn war.” Over drinks, he filled Nicholai in on the status quo bellum.

The Viet Minh were strong in the north, and that was where most of the fighting was. They were weak in the south, especially in the Mekong Delta area, but still capable of staging guerrilla assaults in the countryside and terror attacks – bombs, grenades, that sort of thing – in Saigon. The legendary guerrilla leader, Ai Quoc, had gone into hiding, but the rumor was that he was planning a new offensive in the delta.

On the political side, Bao Dai was a French puppet, far more interested in graft, gambling, and high-priced call girls than in attempting to actually govern, much less win independence from France. If you believed the rumors – and De Lhandes believed them – he used the huge subsidies that the Americans paid him to buy real estate in France. He was also partnered with Bay Vien and the Union Corse, getting a profitable cut from the opium that the former sold in Vietnam and the latter shipped to France and then the United States in the form of heroin.

In exchange, the two criminal organizations helped him keep order in Saigon, including Cholon, the Chinese quarter on the other side of the Saigon River.

“Home ground of the Binh Xuyen,” De Lhandes said, “but the best food, casinos, and brothels.”

“And beyond that?”

“The Rung Sat,” De Lhandes replied. “ ‘The Swamp of the Assassins.’ There you never go, mon pote. Or if you do, you never come back.”

The conversation lapsed as they sat back and enjoyed the rather sexy orchestra. They weren’t alone in that. At the bar, a large and raucous group of what appeared to be off-duty French soldiers looked on in appreciation, grateful to see European women. At other tables sat men who looked like they might be journalists or government workers. Or spies, Nicholai thought, like De Lhandes.

The “stringer” was subtle, for a European. He had gently tried to sound Nicholai out, find out what he was doing, and Nicholai had given him little or nothing, beyond the fact that he was looking for “business opportunities.”

Now De Lhandes said, “Drugs, guns, women, and money.”

“I’m sorry?”

“You said you were looking for business opportunities,” De Lhandes said. “The best opportunities in Saigon are in running opium, arms, whores, or currency.”

He looked for Nicholai’s reaction.

There was none.

The music ended and the band took a break. A waiter came over to Nicholai and said, “Monsieur Antonucci would like to see you in the back.”

Nicholai got up from his chair.

So did De Lhandes.

The waiter shook his head.

“Him,” he said, jutting his chin at Nicholai. “Not you.”

De Lhandes shrugged, and then said, “I’m going out for a night in Cholon, if you care to join me. I can be found at L’Arc-en-Ciel. Any cabbie will know it.”

“I don’t know.”

De Lhandes said, “We’ll make a night of it. A few drinks, maybe some gambling at Le Grand Monde. My pal Haverford is meeting me. Good man – he says he’s some sort of diplomat but of course he’s a spy.”

“It sounds like fun,” Nicholai said, “but I -”

“Oh, come along,” De Lhandes said. “Rumor is that Bao Dai himself will be there. Not a bad connection for a man hoping to set himself up in business here.”

“I’ll try,” Nicholai said.

He followed the waiter to the back room.

115

NICHOLAI SAT DOWN across the desk from Antonucci.

“You like my place?” the Corsican asked.

“It’s quite good, yes,” Nicholai answered.

The small backroom office was surprisingly cluttered. Somehow Nicholai had expected a neater, more businesslike atmosphere. The desk was a shambles of documents, letters, old newspapers, and overflowing ashtrays. A lamp, its shade stained with dead bugs, hung over the desk.

One of Antonucci’s thugs – a tall, thick man – leaned against the wall, the bulge in his jacket doubtless intentional. Antonucci relit his cigar, rolling it carefully around the flame of his lighter. Satisfied with the even burn, he turned his attention back to Nicholai and said, “You’re a young man. Ambitious.”

“Is that a problem?”

Antonucci shrugged. “Maybe. Maybe not.”

He waited for a response, but Nicholai knew that any response to such a wide opening gambit could only be a mistake. So he sipped his brandy and waited for Antonucci to move the next stone.

“Ambition is good in a young man,” Antonucci said, “if he is mature enough to know that with ambition should come respect.”

“Youth thinks it invents the world,” Nicholai said. “Maturity respects the world that it finds. I didn’t come to Saigon to change it or to disrespect its traditions, Monsieur Antonucci.”

“I am glad to hear that,” Antonucci said. “Tradition is that no one conducts certain kinds of trade in Saigon without paying respect to certain other people.”

So, Nicholai thought, the Union Corse already knows about my deal with the Binh Xuyen. Did Bay Vien inform them, or was it their fellow Corsican Signavi? Nicholai would place his money on the latter. “If certain men traditionally control, for example, the armaments trade – ‘men of respect,’ shall we call them – then that is one tradition that a young man would certainly wish to honor.”

“You are wise beyond your years.”

“Not to put too fine a point on it,” Nicholai said, “what is the percentage on tradition here?”

“I am told that it depends,” Antonucci said, “on the particular cargo that is going in and out. But, say, three percent is traditional. So I hear, anyway.”

“Three?” Nicholai raised an eyebrow.

“Three.”

Nicholai raised his glass. “To tradition, then.”

“To tradition,” Antonucci said. “Per tu amicu.”

Nicholai downed his brandy and stood up. “I’ve taken too much of your time. Thank you for seeing me and providing me with your wise counsel.”

Antonucci nodded.

After Nicholai left, Antonucci told his thug, “Tell Yvette I wish to see her on the next break.”