Don Winslow: Satori

“Then I am afraid we would have to cancel our arrangement,” Haverford said pleasantly, glad that the French softened what would be a harsh ultimatum in English. “Your current appearance would prompt questions, the answers to which don’t match the cover we’ve taken a lot of trouble creating for you.”

“ ‘Cover’?”

“A new identity,” Haverford answered, reminded that while Hel was an efficient killer he was nevertheless a neophyte in the larger world of espionage, “replete with a fictitious personal history.”

“Which is what?” Nicholai asked.

Haverford shook his head. “You don’t need to know yet.”

Deciding to test the board, Nicholai said, “I was quite content in my cell. I could go back.”

“You could,” Haverford agreed. “And we could decide to bring you to trial for the murder of Kishikawa.”

Well played, Nicholai thought, deciding that he needed to be more cautious when dealing with Haverford. Seeing that there was no route of attack there, he retreated like a slowly ebbing tide. “The surgery on my face – I assume we are discussing surgery…”

“Yes.”

“I also assume it will be painful.”

“Very.”

“The recuperation period?”

“Several weeks,” Haverford answered. He refilled Nicholai’s cup, then his own, and nodded to Kamiko to bring a fresh pot. “They won’t be wasted, however. You have a lot of work to do.”

Nicholai raised an eyebrow.

“Your French,” Haverford said. “Your vocabulary is impressive, but your accent is all wrong.”

“My French nanny would be greatly offended.”

Haverford switched to Japanese, a better language than French to express polite regret. “Gomen nosei, but your new dialect needs to be more southern.”

Why would that be? Nicholai wondered. He didn’t ask, however, not wanting to appear too curious or, for that matter, interested.

Kamiko waited at their periphery, then, hearing him finish, bowed and served the tea. She was beautifully coiffed, with alabaster skin and sparkling eyes, and Nicholai was annoyed when Haverford noticed him looking and said, “It has already been arranged, Hel-san.”

“Thank you, no,” Nicholai said, unwilling to give the American the satisfaction of correctly perceiving his physical need. It would show weakness, and give Haverford a victory.

“Really?” Haverford asked. “Are you sure?”

Or else I would not have spoken, Nicholai thought. He didn’t answer the question, but instead said, “One more thing.”

“Yes?”

“I will not kill an innocent person.”

Haverford chuckled. “Small chance of that.”

“Then I accept.”

Haverford bowed.

NICHOLAI STRUGGLED against unconsciousness.

Yielding control was anathema to a man who had lived his life on the principle of firm self-possession, and it brought back memories of the pharmacological torture that the Americans had inflicted on him. So he fought to stay conscious, but the anesthesia took its course and put him under.

As a boy he had commonly experienced spontaneous mental states in which he would find himself removed from the moment and lying in a serene meadow of wildflowers. He didn’t know how it happened or why, just that it was peaceful and delicious. He called these interludes his “resting times” and could not understand how anyone could live without them.

But the firebombing of Tokyo, the deaths of friends, then Hiroshima, Nagasaki, and the arrest of his surrogate father General Kishikawa as a war criminal – that cultured man who had introduced him to Go and to a civilized, disciplined, thoughtful life – had robbed him of his precious “resting times,” and, try as he would, he could not seem to recover the serenity that had once been natural to him.

Tranquility was harder to achieve when they put him on an airplane with blackened windows and flew him to the United States, taking him off the flight with bandages around his face as if he had been wounded. He found it harder yet to maintain his equanimity when they rolled his stretcher into the hospital and put the needles into his arm and a mask over his nose and mouth.

He woke panicked because his arms were strapped down to the gurney.

“It’s all right,” a female American voice said. “We just don’t want you rolling around or touching your face.”

“I won’t.”

She chuckled, not believing him.

Nicholai would have argued further, but the pain was acute, like a horribly bright light shimmering in front of his eyes. He blinked, then controlled his breathing and sent the light to the other side of the room where he could observe it dispassionately. The pain still existed, but it was now a detached phenomenon, interesting in its intensity.

“I’ll give you a shot,” the nurse said.

“It isn’t necessary,” Nicholai answered.

“Oh,” she said, “we can’t have you wincing or clenching your jaw. The surgery on your facial bones was very delicate.”

“I assure you that I will lie perfectly still,” Nicholai answered. Through the slits that were his eyes he could now see her preparing the syringe. She was a Celtic-looking healthy type, all pale skin, freckles, rusty hair, and thick forearms. He exhaled, relaxed his hands, and slipped them through the bonds.

The nurse looked terribly annoyed. “Are you going to make me call the doctor?”

“Do what you think you must.”

The doctor came in a few minutes later. He made a show of checking the bandages that covered Nicholai’s face, clucked with the satisfaction of a hen that has just laid a splendid egg, and then said, “The surgeries went very well. I expect a successful result.”

Nicholai didn’t bother with a concurring banality.

“Keep your hands off your face,” the doctor said to him. Turning to the nurse, he added, “If he doesn’t want anything for the pain, he doesn’t want anything for the pain. When he gets tired of playing the stoic, he’ll call you. Take your time getting there if you want a small measure of revenge.”

“Yes, Doctor.”

“I do good work,” the doctor said to Nicholai. “You’re going to have to beat the women off with a stick.”

It took Nicholai quite a while to work through the idiom.

“There will be some minor paralysis of some small facial muscles, I’m afraid,” the doctor added, “but nothing you can’t live with. It will help you keep that indifferent front of yours.”

Nicholai never did call for the shot.

Nor did he move.

CAMOUFLAGED BY NIGHT and the monsoon’s slashing rain, the one they call the Cobra squatted perfectly still.

The Cobra watched the man’s feet plop down in the mud and slosh onto the trail that led toward the bushes where he would do his personal business. It was his routine, so the Cobra was expecting him. The assassin had sat and waited many nights to learn the prey’s habits.

The man came closer, just a few feet now from where the Cobra waited in the bamboo beside the narrow footpath. Intent on his destination, the man saw nothing as he wiped a sluice of rain from his face.

The Cobra chose that moment to uncoil and strike. The blade – silver like the rain – shot out and slashed the man’s thigh. The victim felt the odd pain, looked down, and pressed his hand to the bloody tear in his pants leg. But it was too late – the femoral artery was severed and the blood poured around his hand and through his fingers. Already in shock, he sat down and watched his life flow into the puddle that quickly formed around him.

The Cobra was already gone.

IF MAJOR DIAMOND was pleased that Nicholai Hel had accepted the deal, he wasn’t overly demonstrative in his enthusiasm.