Satori (33 page)

127

S
HE WAS SILVER
in the reflected light of the screen.

Solange sat two rows in front of him, arranged her long legs in the narrow aisle, lit a cigarette, and looked up at the screen.

Simone Signoret starring in
Casque d’or.

The film was a Belle Epoque crime story that held little interest for Nicholai, and he was glad when, after twenty minutes, Solange got up and left the theater. He waited a few seconds and then followed her out onto Rue Catinat. She walked quickly, with long strides, and didn’t look behind her until she came to the Eden Roc Hotel, where she checked her image in the glass doorway and saw his reflection.

Nicholai waited until she went in, then followed her into the small lobby, where he saw the Vietnamese desk clerk smile in recognition and hand Solange her room key. So he knew that this was her official address, although he suspected that she spent most of her nights at the palace.

She went into the elevator and Nicholai stood off and watched the brass arrow above the doors indicate that she went to the second floor. He went over to the small shop, purchased a
Journal,
and perused the headlines before he allowed himself to walk over to the stairway door to make sure that neither the desk clerk nor the concierge were watching, then went in and took the stairs up to the second floor.

He walked the corridor and found that the door to room 231 was ajar. He stood outside for just a moment, allowing his senses to confirm that the perfume was hers.

He went in and shut the door behind him.

Solange stood in the small living room.

“That was foolish,” she said, lighting a cigarette. “Foolish and jejune.”

“What was?”

“Your behavior last night.”

She’s beautiful, Nicholai thought. Her golden hair, a
casque d’or
indeed, soft in the muted afternoon light, one hip cocked in anger, her muscled leg set off by the high heels. She turned away from him, pried the bamboo window shades open with her fingers, and looked out onto the street.

“What did you want me to do?” Solange asked. “Starve? Live on the street?”

“I make no judgments.”

“How worldly of you,” she mocked. “How tolerant you are.”

Nicholai knew that this verbal slap was deserved. He asked, “Did Haverford send you here?”

“No,” she said, shaking her head. “A different one. He called himself ‘Mr. Gold’ … he arranged for me to meet Bao Dai. I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t know if you were alive, or dead …”

Diamond, Nicholai thought, is as unimaginative as he is brutal. He has all the subtlety of a bull. And yet bulls can be very dangerous when they turn, hook, and gore.

“It’s all right,” he said.

“It isn’t,” she said. “They sent me here to lure you, didn’t they? Even if we get out, they can use me to track you. You should leave me, Nicholai. Walk away now and never come back.”

“No.”

She looked back again toward the window, and Nicholai realized that she was afraid she’d been followed from the cinema. “I need to get back before the film is over.”

“To learn how it ends?” he asked.

She shook her head. “I’ve seen it three times. The first two times, I cried.”

“And this time?”

“I will probably cry again.”

He pulled her to him and kissed her. Her lips were soft and warm.

Nicholai brushed the hair away from her neck, kissed her there, and was rewarded with a moan. Encouraged, he unzipped her dress and ran his hand down the warm skin of her back.

“We shouldn’t be doing this,” she murmured. “This is crazy.”

But she shrugged the dress off her shoulders and let it slide down her hips. Then she unsnapped her bra and pressed her breasts against him. “You feel so good.”

Nicholai picked her up and carried her into the bedroom.

Setting her on the bed, he peeled the dress down her legs, revealing her black garter and stockings.

Solange opened her legs, nudged her panties to the side, and said, “Quickly.”

He unzipped his trousers and fell on top of her. Entered her with one thrust and found her wet and ready. She grabbed his buttocks and pulled him in deeper.

“Come in me.”

“What about you?”

“Just come in me. Hard. Please.”

She took control of their lovemaking, pulling him into her until she felt him swell and then climax, crying out.

Nicholai lay on the bed, watching her get dressed, elegant even in her postcoital deshabille. She sat on the edge of the bed as she rolled the stockings back up her legs.

“Breakfast tomorrow?” he asked. “I found a place, La Pagode, that serves quite good croissants.”

“A date?” she asked wryly.

“We can sit at separate tables,” Nicholai said. “Or will the emperor miss you?”

“He’ll be busy with affairs of state,” she answered. “Trying to decide if he’s run by the French or the Americans.”

“And what will he decide?”

“He won’t,” she said, standing up and pulling the dress up over her hips. She frowned, as if she thought her hips were a bit too broad. “The Americans will decide for him. They will decide for everyone.”

“Not for us.”

“No?” She smiled as a mother might smile at a small boy’s heroic fantasy.

“No,” he answered.

She leaned down and kissed him. “And what will we decide?”

“To be together.”

“Yes?”

“Yes.”

He had money now, enough money for them to live happily in a safe place somewhere. He told her all about Voroshenin, the connection to his mother and his family’s fortune, about the safety deposit box, the bank accounts, the passports.

“We could go anywhere,” he said. “France perhaps.”

“I would like that, yes.”

“Maybe to the Basque country,” he said. “Did you know that I speak Basque?”

She laughed. “That is very odd, Nicholai.”

“I learned it in prison.”

“Of course you did,” she said. “Yes, the Basque country is very pretty. We could buy a château, we could live quietly …”

Her face turned more serious than he had ever seen it. “I love you.”

“I love you.”

She broke from his embrace, went into the living room, found her purse, and took out a lipstick. Coming back into the bedroom, she sat in front of the mirror and redid her lips. “You smeared them.”

“I’m glad.”

She checked her image in the mirror, then, satisfied, stood up. Nicholai got up, then held her tight. She accepted the embrace, then broke it and held him at arm’s length. “I have to get back.”

“The film,” Nicholai said. “How does it end?”

Her laugh was enchanting.

The heroine watches them kill her lover, she told him.

128

N
ICHOLAI WAS EMBARRASSED
about sneaking back down the stairway, but he understood Solange’s concern — Bao Dai would not make a complacent cuckold and he would take it out on her, not him.

He walked down the street to the Sporting Bar.

Haverford was already there, sipping on a cold beer. A small paper shopping bag was set on the empty chair beside him.

Nicholai sat down at the next table and both men looked out onto the street.

“You’re the talk of the town,” Haverford said.

“So I hear.”

“Bad idea for a man in your position,” Haverford said. “As a general rule, by the way, and understanding that you’re relatively new at this sort of thing, a ‘secret agent’ should try to
avoid
celebrity.”

“I’ll try to keep that in mind.” He turned to look directly into Haverford’s eyes. “Diamond brought Solange here.”

Haverford didn’t know. Surprise — and perhaps anger — showed in his eyes.

“He’s tracking you down,” Haverford said.

“Because …”

“You went off the radar, Nicholai,” Haverford said. “Because you know things that would be extremely —”

“I wasn’t intended to survive the Temple of the Green Truth, was I?” Nicholai asked. “Diamond arranged for me to be killed there.”

Nicholai would have thought it impossible, but Haverford actually looked ashamed. “It wasn’t me, Nicholai.”

“But the Chinese rescued me. Why?”

“You tell me,” Haverford answered. “You brought the weapons down here, didn’t you? You came to Saigon before you even knew that Solange was —”

“But you were here,” Nicholai said. “You knew.”

“I surmised,” Haverford corrected. “I didn’t know if you were alive or dead —”

“Odd, you’re the second person to say that to me today.”

“—but I did my best to enter the very interesting mind of Nicholai Hel,” Haverford said. “I sat at the
go-kang
and played your side. This was your only move, Nicholai.”

Haverford touched the bag sitting on the empty chair. “It’s in the bag, so to speak,” he said. “A Costa Rican passport under the name of Francisco Duarte, and the home addresses of your intended victims. Go now, go quickly, forget about Solange —”

“You’re full of advice today.”

“My parting gift,” Haverford said, standing up.

“What about Diamond?”

“I’ll take care of him,” Haverford said. “I have to fight a little intra-office battle, but I’ll win. You have your freedom, Nicholai. Enjoy it.
Sayonara,
Hel-san.”

He walked away down the street.

Nicholai picked up the bag and looked inside. As promised, there was the passport and, more important, the home addresses of the men who had tortured him in Tokyo, including Diamond, in what seemed like a lifetime ago.

He ordered a beer and enjoyed it in the oppressive heat. The temperature was in triple digits and it was as humid as a shower. The air was heavy, and the monsoon would break any day now. He hoped not to see it, that he and Solange would be on a flight out by then. Perhaps to some sunny, dry place.

It was tempting to think that they could go back to Japan. His deck of new identities might allow it, but he knew that the country had sadly changed and would never again be what it was. Japan was Americanized now, and he didn’t wish to experience it.

Besides, there was a little matter to settle — three of them, actually —in America itself before he could decide on a place to settle. But Solange would want someplace to be while he was away.

Maybe France, maybe somewhere in the Basque country.

After all, he thought, I speak the language.

Nicholai finished his drink, paid the tab, and walked back out onto the street. He had gone only a couple of blocks when he heard the car come up behind him.

The Renault motor sputtered as the car slowed down to match his pace. Nicholai didn’t glance back — he knew they were coming for him and it wouldn’t help to signal them that he was aware. A quick glance into a shop window told him that it was a blue Renault with a driver and two passengers.

Nicholai kept walking. Would they really attempt to snatch him here? In the late afternoon on Rue Catinat? And would it be a beating, an assassination, or a kidnapping? He brought the
Paris Match
up to his chest, out of their view, and, flexing his forearms, rolled it into a tight cylinder.

Then he saw the two men coming toward him.

One of them made a crucial mistake — he let his own eyes meet Nicholai’s. Then his eyes shifted focus, over Nicholai’s shoulders, and Nicholai knew that the men in the Renault were now on the sidewalk behind him.

So either it’s going to be knives — if it’s an assassination — or it’s a kidnapping, because the car was still keeping pace instead of just letting the men out and roaring off. Nicholai didn’t wait to find out.

He took care of the men behind him first. Swinging the rolled-up magazine as if he was digging an oar into the water, he struck the first assailant in the crotch, then pivoted and swung the magazine like a cricket bat and struck the second man in the neck. Both went down — the first in agony, the second unconscious before he hit the sidewalk.

Nicholai went into a deep squatting horse-stance and thrust the magazine back over his shoulder, striking the next man in the eye, dislodging the orb from its socket. The fourth man reached out and grabbed him by the shoulder. Nicholai dropped the magazine, trapped the man’s hand on top of his own shoulder, and then spun, breaking the arm and spinning him to the ground.

Then he ran.

He sprinted onto a side street that went off to the right from Catinat. The car followed him, bullets zipping as the driver attempted to steer through traffic and shoot at the same time. Pedestrians screamed, fell to the ground, and ducked into doorways, trying to get out of harm’s way as bullets flew and Nicholai pushed through the crowd.

Racing ahead of him, the car crashed onto the sidewalk in front of him.

The driver steadied his pistol on the bottom of the open window and lined up his shot. Nicholai dove to the ground and then rolled until he came up under the driver’s door. The shooter shifted the gun back and forth, trying to relocate his target.

Nicholai reached up, grabbed the shooter’s wrist and yanked it down, breaking the arm at the elbow, then pushed up, slamming the pistol butt into the man’s face. Then he sprang up, grabbed the stunned man by the hair, and slammed his face down onto the window ledge. He opened the door, pulled the man out onto the sidewalk, and got in himself.

A second car roared up the street.

A man leaned out the passenger window, blasting a Thompson.

Nicholai flattened out on the seats as the bullets shattered the windshield and sprayed glass all over him. Grabbing the pistol in one hand, he reached out with the other, opened the passenger door, and fell out onto the sidewalk. With the riddled car as a screen, he belly-crawled along the street, then looked up to see a startled messenger on a motor scooter stopped in front of him.

“Sorry,” Nicholai said as he lunged and knocked the man off the scooter.

He hopped on and raced off.

The driver saw him and came after him.

Nicholai leaned as low as he could over the scooter’s handlebars as the bullets zipped over his head. Police klaxons howled over the shouts and cries of bystanders as he weaved in and out of traffic, the pursuing car hot behind him.

He needed to create some space.

His mind flashed to the Go board, where two ways of creating space existed. The traditional and expected move was to place a stone far from the opponent, which in this case would mean accelerating the scooter to try to gain some ground.

The other was to eliminate the opponent’s nearest stone.

Nicholai slowed down to let the car catch up a little and then cranked the handlebars, turned, and charged the car. Firing the pistol with one hand and twisting the throttle with the other, he rode straight at the startled driver like a kamikaze pilot determined to sell his life at high price.

The shooter got off one more burst before he dived out the door. The driver ducked behind the wheel.

At the last second, Nicholai swerved, missed the car by an inch, and drove out into the swirl of traffic on Rue Catinat. Melting into the chaos of rush hour, he made it down to the harbor, across the bridge, and into Cholon.