Satori - Don Winslow [126]
“But you were here,” Nicholai said. “You knew.”
“I surmised,” Haverford corrected. “I didn’t know if you were alive or dead —”
“Odd, you’re the second person to say that to me today.”
“—but I did my best to enter the very interesting mind of Nicholai Hel,” Haverford said. “I sat at the go-kang and played your side. This was your only move, Nicholai.”
Haverford touched the bag sitting on the empty chair. “It’s in the bag, so to speak,” he said. “A Costa Rican passport under the name of Francisco Duarte, and the home addresses of your intended victims. Go now, go quickly, forget about Solange —”
“You’re full of advice today.”
“My parting gift,” Haverford said, standing up.
“What about Diamond?”
“I’ll take care of him,” Haverford said. “I have to fight a little intra-office battle, but I’ll win. You have your freedom, Nicholai. Enjoy it. Sayonara, Hel-san.”
He walked away down the street.
Nicholai picked up the bag and looked inside. As promised, there was the passport and, more important, the home addresses of the men who had tortured him in Tokyo, including Diamond, in what seemed like a lifetime ago.
He ordered a beer and enjoyed it in the oppressive heat. The temperature was in triple digits and it was as humid as a shower. The air was heavy, and the monsoon would break any day now. He hoped not to see it, that he and Solange would be on a flight out by then. Perhaps to some sunny, dry place.
It was tempting to think that they could go back to Japan. His deck of new identities might allow it, but he knew that the country had sadly changed and would never again be what it was. Japan was Americanized now, and he didn’t wish to experience it.
Besides, there was a little matter to settle — three of them, actually —in America itself before he could decide on a place to settle. But Solange would want someplace to be while he was away.
Maybe France, maybe somewhere in the Basque country.
After all, he thought, I speak the language.
Nicholai finished his drink, paid the tab, and walked back out onto the street. He had gone only a couple of blocks when he heard the car come up behind him.
The Renault motor sputtered as the car slowed down to match his pace. Nicholai didn’t glance back — he knew they were coming for him and it wouldn’t help to signal them that he was aware. A quick glance into a shop window told him that it was a blue Renault with a driver and two passengers.
Nicholai kept walking. Would they really attempt to snatch him here? In the late afternoon on Rue Catinat? And would it be a beating, an assassination, or a kidnapping? He brought the Paris Match up to his chest, out of their view, and, flexing his forearms, rolled it into a tight cylinder.
Then he saw the two men coming toward him.
One of them made a crucial mistake — he let his own eyes meet Nicholai’s. Then his eyes shifted focus, over Nicholai’s shoulders, and Nicholai knew that the men in the Renault were now on the sidewalk behind him.
So either it’s going to be knives — if it’s an assassination — or it’s a kidnapping, because the car was still keeping pace instead of just letting the men out and roaring off. Nicholai didn’t wait to find out.
He took care of the men behind him first. Swinging the rolled-up magazine as if he was digging an oar into the water, he struck the first assailant in the crotch, then pivoted and swung the magazine like a cricket bat and struck the second man in the neck. Both went down — the first in agony, the second unconscious before he hit the sidewalk.
Nicholai went into a deep squatting horse-stance and thrust the magazine back over his shoulder, striking the next man in the eye, dislodging the orb from its socket. The fourth man reached out and grabbed him by the shoulder. Nicholai dropped the magazine, trapped the man’s hand on top of his own shoulder, and then spun, breaking the arm and spinning him to the ground.
Then he ran.
He sprinted onto a side street that went off to the right from Catinat. The car followed him, bullets zipping as the driver attempted