Don Winslow - Satori

“I have to get word to someone.”

Bay frowned. “Is it the woman?”

Nicholai didn’t answer.

THE ROOM IN THE BROTHEL was small but adequate.

Whores, after all, Nicholai thought, end up in a whorehouse.

Nicholai’s room was down the end of a long, narrow hallway. It contained a four-poster bed, and the walls and ceiling were made of mirrored glass.

“Our guests are narcissists,” Momma explained, for she ran this establishment as well as Le Parc. Her silence had been handsomely purchased and guaranteed with the promise of agonizing exfoliation should she as much as whisper of Nicholai’s presence. “They like to admire the beauty of their own ecstasy, and from a variety of angles.”

Nicholai found the constant inescapable self-reflection somewhat unsettling. Everywhere he looked he saw a slightly distorted view of himself. Nor could he leave – he was imprisoned in the bedroom and the attached (mirrored) bathroom, with its tub, sink, and bidet. His meals would be brought in to him, and fresh air was out of the question.

“As for your other needs,” Momma warbled lasciviously, “I have thought of everything.”

“I have no other needs,” Nicholai said.

“You will.”

She shut the door behind her.

HAVERFORD GAMBLED a few piastres at the roulette table, lost, grew bored, and decided to make a night of it at Le Parc.

He walked out onto the street to hail a taxi and thought about Nicholai Hel.

The dramatic shootout on the street had made all the papers, which printed that the attempted assassination and possible kidnapping of the respected French entrepreneur Michel Guibert had been an act of terror committed by the Viet Minh. The businessman had survived the initial attack but was now nowhere to be found, and French officials were very concerned that he was in the hands of the Communist terrorists.

Haverford knew it was Diamond.

Now Hel was either dead or enduring interrogation in a tiger cage. Or perhaps he was alive and had gone into hiding. If so, he had pulled the earth up over him, because Haverford had all his sources out trying to locate Hel (or alternatively his corpse), and they had turned up nothing.

Nor had Hel tried to contact him, which meant that Nicholai no longer trusted him, perhaps that he thought the Americans were responsible for the murder attempt. Growing fond of an asset was always a mistake, but Haverford had come to like, or at least appreciate, Nicholai Hel.

The blade flashed out of the darkness.

One more second and it would have slashed his throat to the neck bone, but Haverford saw it and leaned just out of the way. The backslash was already coming at him. He blocked it with his wrist, felt the blade bite in, and yelled in pain and anger.

The Marines had taught him well.

He grabbed the knife hand, turned, and flipped the attacker over his shoulder, onto the sidewalk. The man landed hard on his back and Haverford stomped hard on his throat. Then he pulled his pistol from the inside of his jacket.

One of the other robbers backed off, but the second kept coming and Haverford shot him square in the chest.

By this time, the Binh Xuyen guards had come running out of Le Parc à Buffles.

“Bandits,” one of them said.

“You think so?” Haverford asked. He was breathing heavily, blood was running down his sleeve, the adrenaline was already dropping and he knew he would soon feel the pain. He looked at the cut and said, “I’ll need to get some stitches.”

One of the attackers was dead, the other had run away, and the Binh Xuyen were already taking their bamboo batons to the knife wielder.

“Alive,” Haverford snapped. “I want him alive.”

“Bandits,” bullshit.

No robber in his right mind would try to take a wallet outside Le Parc; only a madman would try to rob one of Bay Vien’s customers.

The guards dragged the man away.

ANTONUCCI WATCHED his girls play.

The club was busy for a Thursday night, full of hard-drinking French paratroopers and Foreign Legionnaires, and Antonucci kept a careful eye lest they decide to brawl in his establishment. So far the soldiers were behaving themselves, and probably would continue to do so, fearful of being banned from the joint and losing the right to stare at the pretty musicians. Later they would doubtless head to a brothel to douse the flame his girls had set alight, and others would profit.

So be it, Antonucci thought, it’s a sin to traffic in flesh.

He struck a match and rolled the end of his cigar around the flame.

Cubans, the good stuff.

He glanced at his watch. The whoremongering American should be answering for his sins by now. They had sent three of the best, with instructions to make it look like a robbery. Bay Vien wouldn’t like it, but to hell with him too. Sooner or later they would have to deal with that Cholon street rat as well.

And he’ll be much harder to kill than the American, Haverford.

Les amerloques, Antonucci contemplated as he inhaled the rich smoke, such amateurs at intrigue, so ham-handed, so obvious. It takes centuries to produce a conspiratorial culture, generations of familial connection. America, with its youthful naiveté and mongrel bloodlines, is a blunt tool that no steel can sharpen.

America in Asia? A deaf man at the symphony.

So now Haverford lies in the street, the French police will give their apologies along with their indifferent Gallic shrugs, and “Operation X” will go forward. The opium will flow through the French military instead of the Viet Minh, be shipped to labs in Marseille to be turned into heroin, and will find its way to the streets of New York. We will make our money and life will go on.

For some.

He allowed himself a lingering look at the long legs of the saxophone player. Lucky she can sit in her chair, that one. She’ll think three times before making eyes at a handsome stranger again.

And what happened to Guibert? Antonucci wondered. The newspaper story about the Viet Minh was an obvious French fiction. The rumor was that Guibert had made free and easy with Bao Dai’s new mistress, compounding the error of embarrassing him at the gaming table and taking his money. Yes, Bao Dai ordered Guibert killed to get his balls back, and then his boys botched it. He should have come to us.

Antonucci turned his attention back to the saxophone player, Yvette. Maybe I’ll throw her a fuck tonight, he thought, to show her there are no hard feelings. She’s sensitive, gets her feelings hurt so easily. Thin-skinned, that one.

He saw Mancini come through the door and search for him with his eyes. Then the boss of L’Union Corse found him and shook his head.

So subtle a gesture only an old friend would have known what it meant.

Antonucci knew, and it made him angry.

The attempt on the American had failed.

IT HAD BEEN a good payday for De Lhandes.

So good that he bypassed Le Parc and went straight to the House of Mirrors, where he paid a good portion of his earnings for a Sri Lankan girl of such exquisite skill and beauty that it made him favorably reconsider the possibility of a benevolent deity. He finished dressing, kissed the girl on the cheek, left a generous tip on the night table, and headed out. It was not too late for the pho soup at La Bodega.

But that is me, he thought wistfully as he closed the door behind him. The aspirations of a gourmet with the wallet of a crust-munching peasant.

A large hand clasped itself over his mouth and he felt strong arms lift him and then he was in a room.

“Just be quiet for once,” he heard Guibert say.