Satori (40 page)

The tunnel was fast coming in around them as Nicholai pulled Solange along. They came to one false wall after another, but Nicholai had the route firmly in his head and he crawled quickly, encouraging Solange all the way.

“Almost there.”

“That’s good.”

“Oh, that’s very good.”

Diamond heard voices.

Speaking French.

He stopped, lay flat, and held the pistol out in front of him.

Nicholai’s proximity sense warned him.

Someone was around the sharp right angle in front of them.

He stopped.

“What—”

“Ssshh.”

A bomb blast rattled the walls. Dirt slid, narrowing the tunnel. His ears ringing, Nicholai couldn’t hear. He slid forward on his stomach, and then a muzzle flash lit the tunnel and he saw Diamond.

Diamond crawled forward, shooting in front of him.

Nicholai reached his right hand as far as it would go, clutched at the air, and grabbed Diamond’s wrist. “Solange, your knife!”

Diamond ripped his arm backward and freed his hand.

He lowered the pistol again, toward Nicholai’s face.

Nicholai felt the powder blast burn his cheek.

He reached again in the dark, lunging out with a punch. “Your knife!”

Solange coiled as much as she could in the narrowing confine of the tunnel. She pushed out with her long legs and squeezed past Nicholai, her knife in front of her.

Diamond pulled the trigger.

The muzzle flash blinded Nicholai. He crawled past Solange, and heard Diamond crawling away. He started to go after him, but then he heard Solange moan.

Diamond would have to wait.

He stopped and turned to Solange.

“Are you all right?” he asked her.

“Yes.”

But then he felt the warm stickiness of her blood.

She was bleeding badly from the side. He couldn’t see in the stygian darkness but he could feel.

So could she. “Please don’t let me die down here.”

“I won’t let you die anywhere,” he said.

Another blast rocked the tunnel. Dirt fell into their faces, their eyes, their noses, their mouths. He felt for her face, brushed the dirt away, then turned onto his back and started to pull himself along the tunnel shaft, pulling her behind him.

It was excruciatingly slow and he knew she was losing blood fast. The tunnel was collapsing, they were half buried, and he could only feel his way along, turn his head, and try to smell the way to open air.

He had to do it. He couldn’t let her die.

After an eternity he turned, saw a faint beam of sunlight, and sensed a fleeting breath of fresh air. He pulled until they reached the bottom of the tunnel entrance.

“We’re there,” he gasped.

Now he clawed his way up the shaft with one hand and pulled her with the other. He climbed and fell four times before his hand gripped the surface with enough purchase to pull her weight up behind him.

He collapsed on the surface and pulled her into his arms.

“We’re here, my love,” he said. “We made it.”

But Solange was still.

Limp and lifeless in his arms. He wiped a strand of her golden hair from her green eyes, and closed them.

Then the next bomb hit.

164

H
E AWOKE
in a bed.

Clean, crisp sheets tight around his legs.

Haverford looked down at him.

“Good morning.”

“Where …”

“You’re in a Saigon hospital,” Haverford said. “A Foreign Legion patrol found you staggering around out in the delta. You were severely concussed, had some second-degree burns, shrapnel wounds, and three broken ribs.”

“Solange?”

“I’m sorry,” Haverford said.

Then Nicholai remembered.

A deep sorrow came over him.

“Why aren’t I in a cell?” he asked, looking around the room. It was impossibly white and clean.

“Ah,” Haverford said. “Your name is René Dazin. You’re a French merchant that the Viet Minh kidnapped. You were very lucky that the bombing raid happened to set you free, my friend, the same bombing raid that killed Michel Guibert.”

“Who made up that story?”

“I did, of course,” Haverford said. “But you might want to get out of the country as soon as you can walk.”

“Which should be when?”

“Might be another month or so,” Haverford answered. “I have a clean passport for you. You recuperate, then you disappear.”

Nicholai nodded, and even that small move made his head throb. But he was heartened that Haverford thought he needed the passport, even though he had Voroshenin’s multiple identities safely stashed with De Lhandes. The American agent, Nicholai thought, will believe he has me on a leash, and he will be wrong. Then he asked, “Diamond?”

“He made it out,” Haverford said. “Rats usually do.”

“Good,” Nicholai answered, relieved that Diamond hadn’t been killed by an impersonal bomb. He would visit Diamond personally and hold him to account. Not only for himself, but for Solange.

Haverford leaned closer and whispered, “Ai Quoc made it too. So did the weapons.”

“You were working with him all the time,” Nicholai said. He saw it now, all of it. Haverford had played a very deep game of Go, and played it well.

“Since we fought the Japanese together,” Haverford answered. “It’s a triple for me — the Soviets and the Chinese at knifepoint, Mao weakened, and a chance for Quoc to take Saigon and end this war before we can get into it.”

“Do your bosses know?”

“I think so,” Haverford answered. “My boss respects victory. I get promoted, Diamond gets put out to graze. Who knows, maybe you and I will get together again sometime for tea.”

“I’d like that.”

“Me too, chum,” Haverford said.
“Sayonora,
Hel-san.

“Sayonara,
Haverford-san.”

Nicholai lay back and looked out the window at the pretty garden in the courtyard outside. Slashes of silver rain started to fall, the beginning of the wet season.

The beginning of a lot of things.

He had a new identity, the means to effect his revenge, access to the Ivanov fortune, not to mention the money he won from Bao Dai. After settling matters with Diamond and his cohorts, he could start a new life.

If indeed, he thought, there is such a thing as a new life without Solange.

There is, he thought, there must be, because you are alive and that is your karma. And it is your karma also that you are free now, truly free.

But to do what? he asked himself. How do you use your freedom? You are a killer, a warrior, a samurai — no, not a samurai, for you are not attached to any master. You are a
ronin,
a wanderer, an individual. So what does the
ronin
do now? How do you spend this life that has been restored to you?

You begin by killing Diamond, he decided, and then you go on to rid the world of as many Diamonds as you can. The men who kill the innocent — who torture, intimidate, brutalize and terrorize in the name of some “cause” that they believe in more than their own humanity.

He heard Kishikawa’s voice.

Hai, Nikko-san, it is a good way to spend a life.

He looked out the window and saw the hard rain shear a leaf from a branch. The leaf fluttered to the ground, shimmering gold and green in the rain.

Satori.

Acknowledgments

First, to Richard Pine and Michael Carlisle, for e-mailing to ask if I knew the meaning of the word
shibumi
, and for all their enthusiasm, counsel, and support; to Alexandra Whitaker, for her gracious cooperation and generosity; to Graham Greene, for writing the great Saigon novel; to Howard R. Simpson, whose
Tiger in the Barbed Wire
was essential reading; to Mitch Hoffman for being such a kind, patient, and perceptive editor.

Most of all, of course, to Rodney William Whitaker, a.k.a. Trevanian — I hope I did you proud, sir.

Author’s Note

Three summers ago I was sitting in my room at Oxford University (I was there to speak to a group of international students) when I received an e-mail from my agent, Richard Pine, that said, “Does the word
shibumi
mean anything to you?”

I thought, What are these guys doing back in New York, crossword puzzles?

But I wrote back helpfully, “It means ‘understated elegance’ in Japanese.”

Richard responded, “How did you know that?”

I answered with what I thought was obvious: Back in the day there had been a famous book called
Shibumi,
which a bunch of my friends and I just gobbled up. It featured an assassin named Nicholai Hel who was, inter alia, an expert in the Japanese game of Go. We all took up the game (I was terrible at it) and played it well into many nights. I also recalled that Hel had a villa in the Basque country that he tried to imbue with the spirit of
shibumi.
The book, I needlessly typed to Richard, was written by an author whose pen name was Trevanian.

Figuring that I had put this curious correspondence to bed, I turned on the electric kettle to make myself a cup of Nescafé. It was a typical English summer day with the rain pelting against the window like the clacking of an old typewriter, and I was looking to the coffee to keep the chill off as I searched for a pair of dry socks and a snorkel with which to venture out for my next lecture. So, in truth, I was a little annoyed when I heard the
bong
of another e-mail summons and thought that, prominent literary agents that they are, Richard and his cohort Michael Carlisle at Inkwell could probably figure out a ten-letter word for “total destruction” without my help.

Richard’s message read, “How would you like to be the next Trevanian?”

Well, I’m not, and nobody will be.

Rodney Whitaker, aka Trevanian, had such a unique and powerful voice that an attempt to imitate him would leave any writer looking like the second runner-up at a third-rate comedy club’s open mike night.

So I approached the possibility of writing a prequel to
Shibumi
with great trepidation. First of all, what would the Whitaker family think? And how would his legion of devoted fans respond to a pretender to the throne? But more importantly, could I find a way to be true to the substance and style of the man’s work without falling into the trap of offensive—and ultimately futile—mimicry?

But the temptation to try was overwhelming. How could you not seize the opportunity to work with a character as complex and fascinating as Nicholai Hel? How could you not accept the challenge to create within the parameters of the fascinating plot that Trevanian merely hinted at in
Shibumi
—a story that begins in Japan, proceeds to China, and then finds its way to Vietnam? Not only did I admire Trevanian’s work, but I also have a great love of Asia, its culture, and history, so the chance to combine those enthusiasms was irresistible.

I sat down and wrote a letter of introduction to the Whitaker family.

They have been nothing short of wonderful.

Alexandra Whitaker has been pitch-perfect in safeguarding her father’s legacy without coming even close to suffocating this nervous writer during his efforts to do the same. She has offered discreet, invaluable counsel, and I truly hope that I have repaid her kindness with quality.

I usually work very much alone—in almost reclusive solitude—but this was a very different experience. In writing
Satori,
I quickly became aware that I was representing a group of people who were passionately excited and invested in the Hel saga. The aforementioned Messrs. Pine and Carlisle offered crucial critiques and suggestions. Mitch Hoffman, the editor at Grand Central, was an amazingly thoughtful and perceptive contributor. At first I was concerned that I would find all this close attention a bit much. In fact, the opposite was true—conspiring with this team to create a work worthy of Trevanian has been more fun than a writer should be allowed to have.

The work was nevertheless daunting. I had to re-create the Asia of 1951 and ‘52, a research task that was as rewarding as it was enormous. More complex was the challenge of styling a Nicholai Hel that the reader would recognize as the fully formed man of
Shibumi
while at the same time writing a character who was twenty-six years old—and a neophyte in the world of espionage—at the time of the story. Then there was the task of trying to blend my own voice into that of Trevanian’s, as well as writing to the “corners” of the story that he had left in place.

All of which is to say that I had a
wonderful
time writing this book. What a gift I was given from a very brief e-mail on a rainy day in Oxford. I hope that I’ve passed even a small part of that on to the reader.

Don Winslow