Satori - Don Winslow [118]
“Would you like to begin with the Middle Way,” she asked, “then perhaps finish by Fetching the Fire from the Far Side of the Mountain?”
“Neither, actually,” Nicholai said.
“You do not find me attractive?”
“I find you very attractive,” Nicholai said. “But it is so delightful to hear your beautiful Chinese that I would find it most pleasurable to spend our time in conversation.”
She looked at him curiously, but chattered away. He made polite listening sounds and the occasional brief contribution to the conversation, but his thoughts were elsewhere.
Your rudeness to Bao Dai was stupid, he told himself, your anger at Solange unfair. Deliberately making an enemy of the country’s ruler was just courting danger, and as for your attitude toward Solange — did you want to drive her into another man’s arms?
You’ll be lucky if she ever wants to see you again.
He waited in the foyer for De Lhandes to return from his buffet. In a little while, the dwarf came rocking down the hallway on rubbery legs.
“Damn generous of you, Michel,” De Lhandes said, “to a fault, if I might say so, but if the indulgence of even recently made friends is a vice of yours, then I say hurrah for vice in all its variegated forms and twisted permutations, speaking of which —”
“You’re an information broker?” Nicholai interrupted.
“Yes,” De Lhandes said. “Do you have information you wish brokered?”
“I wish to obtain some.”
“And a generous discount for you, my friend,” De Lhandes said. “About whom, may I ask, which indeed I may, should, and must, in fact, if I am to be of service to you.”
On the taxi ride back to Saigon, Nicholai told De Lhandes what he needed.
“Your luck holds,” De Lhandes responded. “By my happily exhausted but cruelly abused male member, your luck holds.”
Let’s hope so, Nicholai thought.
120
SOLANGE PRETENDED that she was lying on the beach at Frontignan and Bao Dai was a small wave that kept washing over her.
The wave — finally — broke.
She waited for a politely appropriate spell of postcoital intimacy and mutual praise, then rolled over for a cigarette.
“He seemed quite interested in you,” Bao Dai said, getting up for a smoke of his own and a glass of scotch. “A drink?”
“Thank you, no. Who did?”
Bao Dai smiled indulgently. “Please, my darling, trust me when I say that I’ve had more than my fill of games tonight. We both know that I’m referring to your handsome fellow countryman.”
“That Guibert?”
“That Guibert.”
Solange got out of bed, slipped into a white silk robe, and cinched the belt around her waist. Then she sat on the Louis XIV loveseat and looked over at him. “Men do find me attractive. Am I meant to apologize for that?”
“Only if the attraction is mutual,” Bao Dai answered. “Was it?”
Solange shrugged. “You said yourself that he is a handsome man. The world is full of them. I suppose you could have me blinded …”
“You’re being glib.”
“What else should I be,” she asked, “when you’re being silly? I’m with you, darling, not with him. I’m a little hurt — I thought you noticed.”
He walked over and put his arms around her neck.
She hated his touch.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “Perhaps it’s that he took so much from me tonight. I was worried that maybe he took you as well.”
“Oh, now you are being silly,” she answered, turning her neck to kiss his fingers. “Vous me faites briller.”
Later he went into his private study, picked up the phone, and ordered, “Kill him.”
121
NICHOLAI LAY ON HIS BACK on his bed and forced Solange out of his mind.
Focusing instead on creating a mental go-kang, he reviewed the state of play as it stood at the moment.
My position, he decided, is strong but ephemerally so. I have sufficient funds to launch and sustain my next moves, but what should those moves be? The possession of Voroshenin’s papers is promising but the promises must be fulfilled — a tricky prospect.
Nor can I rely on Haverford’s promise of a new passport. It could just as easily