Opium by Colin Falconer Read Free Book Online

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