Black Diamond

grateful,” Vinh said, rising from a deep bow with his eyes downcast and glancing across to the seated Vien as if for approval. All the Vietnamese seemed to defer to Vien. “Perhaps we’ll come back one day. Tran told me you took care of our house when those Fujian animals put rats inside.”
    “It’s still quite a mess,” Bruno said. He turned to the tough-looking Vietnamese and held out his hand.
    “Bruno Courrèges, chief of police of St. Denis,” he said. “And you are?”
    Almost reluctantly, the Vietnamese returned Bruno’s handshake and murmured, “Bao Le.” The edge of his hand and the knuckles were thick with calluses Bruno could feel inthe handshake. The only other hand he had shaken like that had belonged to an army karate champion.
    “From Paris?” Bruno asked amiably.
    “Sometimes,” Bao Le replied. “My family is from Hue.”
    The elderly Vietnamese muttered an aside to Tran, who opened the ornately carved door of a low sideboard and brought out a bottle of Macallan.
    “Please, our honored guests will sit and take some refreshment before we dine. I know the general likes his Scottish drink, and there is also champagne,” said Vien, gesturing to a tall silver chalice on the sideboard in which two bottles of Dom Pérignon were chilling. At each of the places set for dinner were glasses for champagne, white wine, red wine, dessert wine and cognac, alongside thick crystal tumblers for the scotch. Bruno exchanged glances with Isabelle at the door, who gave him the merest ghost of a wink.
    Vien put down his smoldering cigarette, opened the bottle of Macallan and poured a large tumbler for the brigadier. Tran’s eyes rose, as if this act of Vien pouring a drink for someone with his own hands was an extraordinary honor. Bruno felt adrift, as if in a strange country where the laws and customs were wholly foreign to him.
    “You see, I remember. No ice,” Vien said to the brigadier, and then clinked his cognac glass against the tumbler. “Chin-chin,” he said, and Bruno fought to suppress a smile.
    Tran steered Bruno and J-J to the chairs on either side of the brigadier and then began pouring champagne. Isabelle declined a seat and remained standing by the door, her gun now in a shoulder holster beneath her loosely cut jacket. Bao Le, Bruno noted, was drinking water.
    “You are Sergeant Bruno, who defended my friend Vinh and his wife when you were dressed as le Père Noël,” saidVien. “We are most grateful, and I would like you to take a drink with me. But first let me convey our condolences for the death of your friend Hercule Vendrot. We mourn with you. He was a great friend to our people, a fine Frenchman and a good man. I knew him for over fifty years, and I shall miss him.”
    He put one hand on the table to help push himself slowly to his feet and raised his cognac glass to Bruno, who stood and raised his glass in return. All the Vietnamese were now standing, and the brigadier joined them. The last man still seated, J-J grabbed a glass and hastily got to his feet.
    “Hercule Vendrot, in respectful memory,” said the old Vietnamese, and drank his glass to the end. He refilled it and then leaned across to clink his glass against Bruno’s champagne.
    “We never forget those friends who fight for us,” he said, putting his hand on the table once more for support as he sat down. He looked at the brigadier. “We have been under attack again, but only now do you seek me out. You have left it late, monsieur.”
    “Like you, we were taken by surprise by these latest attacks. We’re trying to establish whether this is something local that blew up and got out of hand or whether the
treizième
is behind it, in which case they’d be breaking the truce.”
    “The
treizième
is always behind it, but they’ll lie through their teeth when they talk to you French. They’re just giving the Fujian Dragons their head, letting them act as scouts to see how much we resist,” Vien said. “Where is Savani? Is he not with you?”
    “If we can organize a meeting with the
treizième
, Savani will come for that. He sends you his respects, but said that he’d want to know his Binh Xuyen friends sought his helpbefore he intervened. I saw him today, but he is back in Corsica by now.”
    Vien grunted and waved a hand at Tran, who went across to a dumbwaiter in the wall and began pulling out plates of Vietnamese delicacies,
banh bao
fern cakes,
nem lui
pork dumplings rolled as thinly as a