World: A Beautiful Affair

Marseille is the halfway house on the world's main route of illicit drug traffic. Crude morphine from the Middle East is smuggled into the tough, jaded Mediterranean port and converted to heroin. It is then sent to New York by clandestine carriers as diverse as diplomatic pouches and the Air France stewardess caught three years ago with the stuff in her bra. Balding little Louis Lavalette, chief of the police judiciare for Southern France, has long had a good hunch who was behind the operation: "Monsieur Jean" Cesari, a quick-witted courtly Corsican who, in 20 years of flitting through the Marseille...

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