Satori - Don Winslow [136]
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.
143
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.
144
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.
145
“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.”
“Very well,” Nicholai answered. “I need to leave. I have been discovered here.”
“Impossible!” Momma thundered, deeply offended. “No one in my establishment would breathe a word, I assure you!”
More likely it was De Lhandes, Nicholai thought, and I played the wrong stone and misjudged his character. I will deal with him another time, but for now this place has been compromised and I have to find another. “Madame, I must depart.”
“It is not safe for you out there!”
“It is not safe for me in here,” Nicholai said. “Did you send a girl to me a little while ago?”
“No, monsieur, you said —”
“Quite so,” Nicholai answered. “Did you send anyone?”
“No.”
“Well, someone came,” Nicholai said, “with the intent, I believe, of killing me.”
Whoever had come was a professional, Nicholai knew, who realized that he had been discovered and then laid a trap outside the window. He could sense him out there, and later, when Nicholai sensed that he had withdrawn, he had looked out the window to see that the bushes were bent down and the slightest trace of footprints were still extant.
There was something else lingering … something that his proximity sense warned him of …
Momma drew in a breath of apparent shock. “I am devastated, monsieur! Devastated! Désolée!”
“Apologies are unnecessary, madame,” Nicholai answered, “but I need to leave right away.”
“I will telephone —”
“By the frothing jism of Jove, let me pass, sir!”
Nicholai heard De Lhandes’s indignant voice echo down the hallway.
“I will have him —”
“Let him through,” Nicholai said.
A few moments later, an even more than usually tousled De Lhandes came into his room.
“I thought you betrayed me,” Nicholai said.
“I thought about it, believe me,” De Lhandes answered.
“Why didn’t you?”
“I’m not entirely certain,” De Lhandes responded, “and were I you — a tantalizing concept now that I think