Don Winslow - Satori

Bao Dai liked it a little thicker than she preferred – the emperor went for that smoky, cinema look.

Fair enough, she didn’t care.

But in the light of morning she wondered how much longer would he find her intriguing, attractive? What would happen when she had no new tricks to show him and he grew bored with the old ones? The same thing, she knew, that always happened. He would start to find fault, correct her grammar, criticize small things about the way that she dressed, and then he would say he was only teasing. He would stop laughing at her quips, grow impatient with the time she took to get ready, his eye would wander to the next new thing.

C’est l’amour.

She didn’t really care for Saigon. Too humid, and the air was always thick with intrigue. It was a hothouse, and she found it all rather suffocating. Sometimes it occurred to her to go back to France – not to Montpellier, with its memories, but to Paris or maybe Lyon. The Puppet Prince kept talking about a trip to Paris. Perhaps she could keep him on the hook until they were there, and then let him grow bored with her and leave her.

With a stipend, of course.

Is Nicholai Hel really dead?

The thought struck like a punch to the stomach. Her hand quivered and she had to hold her right wrist with her left hand to steady the pencil.

But is he really dead and is it my fault? Was our indiscretion discovered, did the emperor find out that his crown had horns and order Nicholai killed out of jealousy? No, she thought, if Bao Dai had done that he couldn’t have resisted telling me, or at least hinting at it. And his ardor in the bedroom has certainly not diminished.

Solange was familiar with the behavior of men who suspected they’d been cuckolded. They were sullen and ridiculous – wanting sex but not wanting to dip their pens in a contaminated inkwell. They alternately sulked and strutted, and then either went away or came into bed, depending on how she manipulated them, of course. But Bao Dai had been his usual cheerful, unabashedly lustful self.

Tonight she would go with him again, out to dinner somewhere and then doubtless to Le Grand Monde for more gambling. Just as doubtless to bed, where she had better devise some new treat to keep him interested.

That is unless he has found out, and then he could just as well beat me, or take me somewhere to be killed.

If Nicholai isn’t dead, where is he?

She was thinking this when there was a soft knock on the door. The maid, finally bringing the hand cloth she had requested an hour ago.

“Come in!” she yelled from the bathroom.

In the mirror she saw the bearded dwarf, De Lhandes.

“ARREST HER,” Diamond said again.

“For what?” Bao Dai asked.

“If for nothing else,” Diamond insisted, “disrespecting you.”

“That is a shame,” Bao Dai agreed, “but hardly a crime.”

The argument in Bao Dai’s private office in the palace had gone on for quite some time and the emperor was starting to tire of it. He did not like this American. Well, he did not like any Americans, but they were now paying the bills, would soon displace the French, so he was obliged to listen. This “Gold” seemed to have a personal grudge against Solange and Guibert. As to the former it was difficult to feel animosity, as to the latter it was virtually unavoidable.

“She knows where he is,” Diamond pressed. “Give me some men, let me take her and get the truth out of her.”

“And what if she won’t tell you?” Bao Dai asked.

“She will.”

Despite his better instinct, Bao Dai had to acknowledge that the idea had some appeal. The woman had, after all, cuckolded him, and he felt it keenly. Worse, his humiliation would soon be the topic for dirty whispers and salacious chuckles all over Saigon. So the thought of Solange under the tender care of the Tiger was not without its pleasures.

There were more practical reasons for seeking her help in locating “Guibert.” The flow of opium brought with it a river of gold. When added to the healthy inducements that the Americans were now paying, it all amounted to vast wealth. But the amerloques might stop paying if it became public that he was profiting from the heroin that flooded their streets.

His position in the palace was tenuous. The French might seek to replace him; if not, the Americans. Then there was his ally and partner in crime, Bay Vien, who was helping him route money out of the country through L’Union Corse. Already he had massive bank accounts in Switzerland and landholdings in France, Spain, and Morocco, against the time that the Europeans threw him out or, more likely, the Viet Minh won the war.

But his security would be threatened if Operation X were exposed, and it was certainly possible that Solange was in league with Guibert to do just that.

“Pick her up,” he said.

Diamond smiled. “Right away, Your Excellency.”

“But hurt her as little as possible,” Bao Dai said, more to soothe his own conscience than from any hope that this brutal man would calibrate his efforts.

“We’ll leave no scars,” Diamond assured him. “And her end will look like suicide. An overdose, perhaps. She wouldn’t be the first French actress to -”

“I don’t want to know,” Bao Dai said.

GETTING INSIDE the House of Mirrors unseen was as nothing, even in the daylight of morning.

Exhausted from the night’s exertions, whores sleep in the morning, soundly and sweetly, and the guards around the brothel were equally somnolent in the rising heat. Moisture masks sound as surely as dryness enhances it, and in the wet morning the Cobra was able to slip through the lax security.

It took time and patience, but what didn’t?

The prey’s room was at the end of the hallway. The Cobra already knew this but didn’t need to know, because the faint odor was discernible even behind the closed door. A Westerner simply smells different from an Asian, and there were no other Europeans in the brothel in the early morning.

The Cobra paused in the hallway and listened.

The prey was asleep, so this would be easy.

There were no inside locks on whorehouse doors, in case security needed to get in quickly to aid a beleaguered girl. This would be a simple matter of quietly opening the door, dispatching the deceased in his sleep, and leaving out the window.

The Cobra moved forward and pulled the knife.

HIS PROXIMITY SENSE alerted him.

Nicholai was meditating, trying to recover the long-lost tranquil state of his boyhood, when he became aware of the footfalls in the hallway.

So soft as to be almost undetectable.

The light gait of a tiny Asian courtesan? he wondered. Had Momma sent someone, despite his wishes to the contrary? He lay still and listened, allowed his proximity sense to focus on the target. As he did so, the steps stopped.

Perfect silence.

But Nicholai knew.

It wasn’t a whore, but a predator.

Nicholai slid off the bed to the side opposite the door. He flattened himself on the wooden floor and waited. The slightest trace of a scent came from the hallway.

But the door never opened.

The hunter had sensed the prey’s awareness and backed off, and Nicholai realized that this was no ordinary hunter.

THE COBRA COILED in the bushes outside the window.

The prey had been flushed, and if it fled, would come this way.

But the prey didn’t come.

The Cobra waited for a while, then sneaked away.

“YOU WISHED TO SEE ME, monsieur?” Momma asked.

“I wish to see Bay Vien,” Nicholai answered.

“He is hardly your butler,” Momma said, a tad annoyed, “and besides, he has asked me to see to your every need.”