Satori - Don Winslow [13]
“How so?” Nicholai asked.
“You don’t need to know yet,” Haverford answered. “Study the file. Solange will help quiz you on the details. When you’re thoroughly conversant with your new past, I’ll brief you on your new future.”
My “new future,” Nicholai thought. What a uniquely American concept, perfect in its naïve optimism. Only the Americans could have a “new” future, as opposed to an “old” one.
“Now we need to take some photos,” Haverford said.
“Why?”
Because they were assembling a file on Guibert, explained Haverford. No one in the arms trade would go very long in this day and age without acquiring a jacket in every major intelligence service in the game. The photos would be placed in CIA, Deuxième Bureau, and MI-6 files, then leaked to the Chinese through moles. Photos of Michel Guibert would be inserted into old Kuomintang police files that the Reds were currently sifting through. The “wizards in the lab” would make Guibert appear on streets in Kowloon, casinos in Monaco, and the docks of Marseille.
“By the time we’re done,” Haverford chirped, “you’ll believe you’re Michel Guibert and that you sat out the war in Hong Kong. As a matter of fact, from now on you answer to ‘Michel’ and only Michel. Not ‘Nicholai.’ Got it, Michel?”
“As difficult a concept as that might be,” Nicholai answered, “I believe I have a grasp of it, yes.”
Solange came back into the room carrying a stack of clothes that she draped over the back of a chair. “Your new wardrobe, Michel. Très chic.”
She went back out to get more.
Nicholai examined the clothes, which appeared to be secondhand. Of course they were, he thought. It makes perfect sense — when you step into someone’s life, you step into his clothes, and those clothes would be worn, not new. He examined the labels. Some of the older clothes were from a tailor in Kowloon, but most were French, and mostly from expensive-sounding shops in Marseille. A few of the shirts and two of the suits came from Monaco. All of them were expensive and of lightweight fabrics — silk and cotton. There were several pairs of twill khaki trousers, pleated, of course. It seemed that Michel favored white and khaki suits with colorful shirts and no ties.
And the clothes smelled — of sweat, tobacco, and cologne. You have to give the devil his due, Nicholai thought. Haverford had been nothing if not thorough.
Solange returned with more clothes, stood with the tip of her index finger to her lips and contemplated the wardrobe and Nicholai. “Let me see, what shall you wear for the first shot? It is set in Hong Kong, no?” Her serious concentration on this make-believe was quite charming. She selected a shirt, put it back, chose another, and matched it with a suit. “This, yes? Oui—parfait.”
She handed the selections to Nicholai and ordered him to go change. When he came back from the bedroom dressed as Michel, Haverford had a camera ready. They went out in the garden to get a “blurred, outdoor” background. In what became a painfully tedious afternoon for Nicholai, they repeated this process numerous times, Solange having a wonderful time, however, selecting Michel’s ensembles.
“That was excruciating,” Nicholai said after Haverford finally left.
“It was fun,” Solange answered. “I love fashion, and Michel has a sense, no?”
“You chose all those clothes, didn’t you?”
“Of course,” she said. “You don’t think I’d let them dress you out of fashion, do you?”
After a dinner of suprêmes de poulet à l’estragon with green beans à la provençale, a dessert of tarte aux poires et à la frangipane, and the requisite espresso, cognac, and cigarette, Nicholai studied the Guibert file. The fiction was impressive in its volume and detail, but Nicholai had no trouble memorizing apparently important trivia such as which tabac Michel favored in Montpellier,