122
M
ICHEL
G
UIBERT WAS
the talk of Rue Catinat.
Even the waiters at breakfast treated him with an increased deference, and Nicholai saw the staff and other guests subtly point to him and whisper.
He found his new status amusing.
So did De Lhandes. He arrived in the dining room looking remarkably fresh from the previous night’s excesses, sat down at Nicholai’s table, and sniffed disapprovingly at the fare.
“But, my friend,” he huffed, “this is shit, especially for a man of your taste and wealth. These Corsicans wouldn’t know cuisine if it crept up their anal cavities and warbled Piaf tunes. Look, they can even make a debacle of breakfast. Would you like a real croissant?”
“I suppose.”
“Come on then.”
De Lhandes led him outside and down to the corner of Rue Catinat and Le Loi to a place called La Pagode, where the outdoor café stubbornly refused to adorn itself with anti-grenade netting.
“The owners act as if there is no war,” De Lhandes said. “They consider putting up such vulgarities as the edge of a slippery slope. This, my nouveau riche friend, is how quality is preserved.”
Over café au lait, croissant — which were, Nicholai had to admit, delicious — and apricot preserves, De Lhandes slipped him an envelope. “Exactly what you requested.”
“And what do I —”
De Lhandes waved a small, dismissive hand. “On the house, my friend.”
“I can’t —”
“You can and shall,” De Lhandes said curtly. “Am I not allowed to return a gift in my own way, with what means I have at hand, by the ancient bells of St. Germain? I would have cited Notre Dame, but you’ll understand that I’m a bit sensitive about the Quasimodo association.”
“Thank you,” Nicholai said.
“You’re welcome.”
Nicholai was impressed that De Lhandes never asked why he wanted the contents of the envelope or what he intended to do with them.
It has been a long time, he thought, since I’ve had a friend.
Later that morning, Bay Vien personally picked Nicholai up to deposit his winnings in the bank. They rode in his personal car, armored, and escorted by machine-gun-wielding guards.
“You are a difficult friend,” Bay said on the drive.
“How so?”
“You embarrassed the emperor,” Bay said. “In his city, in front of his woman.”
My
woman, Nicholai thought. But he said, “You helped me.”
“Everyone saw how you looked at her,” Bay said. “For that alone, not to mention the money, he could kill you.”
“More likely he would ask you to do it.”
“True.”
“And would you?”
Bay said, “I’d feel badly about it — you’re a good guy, for a
colon,
and you have balls. But don’t kid yourself, Michel — guys like you come and go, I will have to live with Bao Dai for a long time. So if he asks me to get rid of you …”
He didn’t need to finish the sentence.
“I would understand,” Nicholai said.
“Leave Saigon,” Bay said. “Get your money and get out. Tomorrow. Today if you can.”
“I have business here.”
“The rocket launchers?” Bay asked. “Don’t think I’ve forgotten your offer to procure more of them. But do it from Laos. You don’t need to be in Saigon.”
“I have other business here.”
“What kind of business?”
“My
business,” Nicholai said.
“Please tell me you are not going after this woman,” Bay said. “I have a dozen blonde Frenchwomen —”
“As I said,” Nicholai snapped. “It’s my business.”
Bay regarded him for a long moment. “Do it quickly,
xiao.
Do it quickly and get the hell out, before I have to do something that I really don’t want to do.”
They arrived at the Banque de l’Indochine. The Binh Xuyen guards escorted Nicholai and his cash inside.
123
H
E MET WITH THE BANKER,
a
colon
in his mid-fifties, in a private office.
“I wish access to my safety deposit box, please,” Nicholai said.
Laval had heard of this Guibert. All of Saigon had. He said, “I’m sorry, monsieur, but I wasn’t aware that you had a safety deposit box with us.”
“I do,” Nicholai answered. “In the name of Yuri Voroshenin.”
He slid Voroshenin’s passport across the desk. Laval glanced at it and then looked back at Nicholai. “I am informed that Monsieur Voroshenin recently passed away.”
“As you can see,” Nicholai said, “you were apparently misinformed.”
“This is most irregular.”
“Monsieur Laval,” said Nicholai, “the Banque de l’Indochine is most irregular.”
Laval looked insulted. He sat back in his chair and then ran his long fingers across his high forehead. “Do you have any additional identification that might authenticate your identity, monsieur … whoever you are?”
Nicholai nodded, removed an envelope from his jacket pocket, and handed it to Laval. The banker took it, opened it, turned ghostly pale, and sputtered, “This is outrageous.”
“I agree,” Nicholai said. “I imagine Madame Laval would agree as well.”
“How did you get these?” Laval asked, stunned by the photographs of him in bed with a young Cambodian girl.
“Does it matter?”
“This is hardly the act of a gentleman.”
“Again, we are in perfect harmony. Those copies are for you to keep, I have others safely stored away. However, if this is not adequate identification” — he slid a stack of piastre notes across the desk — “perhaps
these
pictures might suffice.”
Laval hesitated. Then he took the stack of bills and stuffed them and the photos inside his jacket pocket.
He grudgingly led him to the vault and handed him the key.
Nicholai opened the steel box.
Bankbooks for accounts in Switzerland and the United States. In addition to the accounts were stocks and securities — a bit ironic for a Communist, Nicholai thought. He knew nothing of such things, but could hope that Voroshenin did, and had invested the Ivanov fortune wisely. Then there were codes to other safety deposit boxes. In Zurich, Bonn, Paris, New York, Buenos Aires.
Of course, Nicholai couldn’t know what they contained, but there was already enough money to fund what he wanted to do and for he and Solange to live in reasonable comfort and safety.
And, on the subject of safety, Nicholai was delighted to find what he had hoped to find, and what a man of Voroshenin’s profession would surely store in a secure place —
Passports.
One French, another German. With unintentionally exquisite irony, one was Costa Rican — the same nationality that the Americans had promised him. And, speaking of the Americans, Voroshenin had even provided himself with an American passport.
One “Michael Pine,” resident of Park Avenue in New York City.
Nicholai took the contents of the box, put them in his briefcase, and walked out of the vault.
Laval was waiting for him.
“Now I wish to open an account, please,” Nicholai said, handing him the American passport, “in this name.”
The account was opened. Nicholai kept enough for immediate expenses, deposited the rest, and instructed Laval to wire it to their branch in Marseille.
Laval obediently did so.
Nicholai wished him a pleasant day and left.
124
T
HE MEN SAT
in Antonucci’s office.
Mancini, Antonucci, Guarini, Ribieri, Sarti, Luciani — the whole leadership of L’Union Corse sat around the table and listened to what Captain Signavi’s guest, the
amerloque
who called himself “Mr. Gold,” had to say.
“The so-called Michel Guibert,” Diamond said, “is an asset of an American anti-narcotic unit sent to infiltrate the Indochina— Marseille—New York heroin connection.”
The men were silent for a minute.
Finally, Mancini said, “This is what comes of doing business with outsiders.”
“He seemed like a respectful young man,” Antonucci responded. He took a cigar from its humidor and carefully lit it, not showing his fury at having been deceived by the young Guibert.
“It’s the times,” Guarini offered consolingly.
“There’s more,” Diamond said. “His handler is an American working in Saigon under USIS cover.”
“Haverford,” Mancini said. “I knew it.”
More silence ensued, more sipping of espresso, more slow, deliberate smoking. Then Mancini said, “The Haverford thing has to look like something else. A robbery … use some of the local boys.”
“What about Guibert?” Antonucci asked.
Signavi interjected, “He’s something different. He can handle himself.”
The men took this in.
Antonucci said, “I’ll give it to the Cobra.”
125
A
DOUR, OVERWEIGHT
F
RENCHMAN
was waiting for Nicholai in the lobby of the Continental. He slowly unfolded himself from his chair and approached Nicholai as he waited for the clerk to retrieve his room key.
“Monsieur Guibert?”
“Yes?”
The man’s suit hung off him like laundry. Dark circles under his eyes gave an impression of even greater colonial lassitude.
“Patrice Raynal,” he said. “SDECE. I would like a word.”
“The bar?” Nicholai suggested.
“Perhaps your room?” Raynal suggested. “For your privacy?”
They repaired to Nicholai’s room, where Raynal refused the offered drink, lowered himself into a chair, and got right down to business. “I don’t like you, Guibert.”
“Ah,” Nicholai responded. “Most people wait a day or two until they decide to dislike me.”
“They have not had the advantages,” Raynal said, “of receiving hostile wires from Moscow and Beijing demanding your immediate arrest and extradition, nor equally strident inquiries from Norodom Palace inquiring about the identity of a Frenchman who insulted the emperor and made improper advances toward his escort. Nor have they received the reports that you sold a cargo of extremely lethal and probably stolen weapons to the Binh Xuyen and that you took an extremely ill-advised airplane ride to Cap St.-Jacques.”
“The Binh Xuyen are your allies,” Nicholai said pleasantly.
Raynal’s voice was tired. “You see, publicly they’re not. The French government does not consort with pirates and dope smugglers. And just this morning, Guibert, before I even had a chance to spike my coffee with a fortifying jolt of cognac, I received word that a certain, admittedly minor Soviet functionary, formerly of the Beijing delegation, was dead in a Cholon flophouse, an apparent suicide but, jaded cynic that I am, I can’t help but wonder if your presence in the same city is merely coincidental. You do seem to have a habit of being in the vicinity of dead Russians.”
Leotov dead? Nicholai wondered, keeping any sign of it off his face. An overdose or the Russians, or the Chinese? “I suppose I have that in common with any number of, say, Germans.”
“Witty,” Raynal said. “I dislike you more every minute.”
“So
are
you arresting me?” Nicholai asked, tired of the jousting. Obviously, extradition to either of the Communist capitals would be the end of the game.
“No,” Raynal said. “We don’t take our orders from Moscow or Beijing. Not even from Washington, yet. But your business in Saigon is concluded. You managed to make a nice little lagniappe at the casino last night. Leave, Guibert, as soon as possible.”
“Bay Vien told me the same thing.”
“He was correct,” Raynal said. “I really don’t care what happens to you, I just don’t want it happening in my little garden. Not to put too fine a point on it, get out.
Va t’en.”
He pushed himself up from the chair, looking even more wrinkled than he did when he arrived.
“One more thing?” he said as he walked to the door. “Leave His Excellency’s woman alone.”
Nicholai stepped over to the note that was set on his table. If Raynal had noticed it, he hadn’t let on.
He opened the envelope.
Ciné Catinat? À deux heures?
Unsigned, but in her hand.
He looked at his watch.
He had just enough time to make his rendezvous at Sarreau’s and then go meet Solange.
126
N
ICHOLAI WALKED
up to the counter at Sarreau’s and asked for two packets of enterovioform.
“You are sick to your stomach?” the clerk asked.
“Otherwise I would not have asked.”
He paid for the pills and then went back onto Rue Catinat and walked down toward the Neptuna Swimming Pool.
The Vietnamese who had followed him from the hotel was still on his tail.
Whoever he works for — the Viet Minh or the French — should be informed of his ineptitude, Nicholai thought. Unless the point is to be discovered, in which case he should be promoted.
Nicholai strolled to the pool.
It was a blistering hot day and the pool was crowded. Children splashed and annoyed the serious swimmers attempting to do disciplined laps in the marked lanes. Nicholai lingered under a plane tree at the edge of the little park, lit a cigarette, and watched.
His tail made a show of “disappearing” into the crowd.
So many games, Nicholai thought, to market the instruments of death.
He waited for fifteen minutes, grew bored and irritated, and decided that enough was enough. As he was walking away from the Neptuna, a Vietnamese fell in at his side. The man was especially short, and clad in khaki shirt, shorts, and rubber sandals.
“You brought the police,” the man said.
“They brought themselves,” Nicholai answered.
“I could lose him easily,” the man scoffed. “But
you
…”
“I apologize for my stature.”
“Buy cigarettes.”
“It’s a bit late to stunt my growth.”
“Buy cigarettes.” The man jutted his chin at a tobacco shop and then he melted into the crowd.
Nicholai walked over to the tobacconist’s. The owner, an old man, handed him the pack. An address was scrawled on the back.
“Take a
cyclo-pousse
,” the old man snapped.
Nicholai went back out on the street to hail one of the bicycle-powered rickshaws. The first one in a long queue hurried to pick him up, Nicholai gave him the address, and the driver pedaled out into the swirling Saigon traffic.
Nicholai noticed the police tail get into the next in line, but the driver argued with him, with much yelling and hand-waving. By the time the police tail found a driver who would take him, Nicholai’s rickshaw had disappeared into the current.
The route led across the Dakow Bridge, over the Saigon River into Cholon, and Nicholai recalled the sad joke that there is a Chinese quarter in every city in the world except Shanghai.
This one was no different. Three-story tenement buildings painted in vivid greens, blues, and reds, their tiny railed balconies decorated with drying laundry, leaned over the narrow streets as if they might imminently collapse onto them. Every other block seemed to have a small Buddhist temple or a shrine to a lesser Chinese god.
The driver navigated the vehicle through the clogged, noisy streets and pulled up alongside what appeared to be a tailor’s shop, then refused the payment that Nicholai offered as he got out.
Nicholai went into the shop and was immediately hustled through a door into a back room. His proximity sense was on high alert, but discerned no danger. Apparently, the Viet Minh had not brought him there to kill him. Was it possible that they didn’t know about his transfer of the weapons to the Binh Xuyen?
The man who had met him near the pool was already there. He did not give a name, but said brusquely, “You did not make the rendezvous in Luang Prabang.”
“No,” Nicholai answered,
“you
did not make the rendezvous in Luang Prabang.”
“Our man was murdered shortly before.”
“I can hardly be held responsible for his negligence,” Nicholai answered.
“You have no feeling.”
“See that you remember it.”
The agent frowned at the distasteful necessity of dealing with this mercenary creature. “Where are the weapons?”
So, Nicholai thought, either they do not know or they are not certain. He needed time and space to complete his maneuvers on the board, just a little space to move the stones into position. “Where is my money?”
“When we get the weapons,” the Viet Minh agent answered. “Where are they?”
“In a safe place,” Nicholai answered.
“We have heard rumors …”
So the Viet Minh had heard about his airplane ride with the Binh Xuyen and the French into Saigon. Yet his making contact through the stamp shop had confused them. Otherwise they would have tried to kill me immediately, he thought. “You shouldn’t listen to rumors. It’s a morally debilitating habit.”
“You are playing a dangerous game,” the agent said. “If you have sold the weapons to the Binh Xuyen, you will answer for it.”
“I answer only to myself,” Nicholai responded. “In addition to the money, I believe there is also the matter of a new passport?”
The agent said, “You will get your money when we get the weapons and your new papers when the weapons reach their destination.”
“That would be to this Ai Quoc person?”
The agent didn’t answer.
Which is answer enough, Nicholai thought. He knew he had to take the offensive. “You will give me the money
and
the papers when I deliver the weapons to you.”
“That is inconceivable.”
“Nonsense,” Nicholai responded, “as I just conceived of it. You might think it improbable, inconvenient, perhaps impossible, but inconceivable? No.”
“I will pass along your request,” the agent said stiffly.
“It is not a request,” Nicholai said. “It is a nonnegotiable demand.”
Nicholai knew that he was acting far too Western — confrontational and direct — but he didn’t have the time for elaborate Asian courtesy. And he needed them to believe that the papers were crucial to him.
“Do not contact me again,” Nicholai pressed. “I will contact you within two days to tell you where and when we can make the transfer. If you do not have the money, the deal is off. If you do not have the papers, the deal is off. Do we understand each other?”
“I understand you far too well.”
“Good,” Nicholai said. “Now I have an appointment.”
He took a
cyclo-pousse
back into the city and had it drop him off near the Ciné Catinat.