Satori - Don Winslow [140]
“More than you, perhaps,” she said. The knife slid out from behind her back. She held it low at her waist, slightly back, out of his reach. “I make money as I can — as a courtesan, as a killer. Tell me the difference.”
“In the latter case, people die.”
“You are hardly in a position to look down at me from a position of moral superiority, mon cher,” Solange answered.
So very true, he thought.
So very true.
“You must have amassed quite a fortune,” he said.
“I save it,” she acknowledged. “The lives of both my professions are quite short. Beauty and swiftness fade quickly when they fade. I will need to retire young, I’m afraid.”
Nicholai doubted that her beauty would ever fade. Not in his eyes, at least. Nor for her eyes, those amazing, beautiful green eyes. He saw her shift her right hip ever so slightly forward. The muscles in her calf tightened.
“La Corse hired you to kill me,” he said.
“I told you to walk away from me and not come back.”
“Was that my unforgivable sin?” he asked. “Loving you?”
“It’s the one thing a whore cannot abide.”
The tendons in her right wrist tensed.
It was subtle, but he saw it.
Could he stop the lightning lunge he knew was coming? Perhaps, perhaps not. If he did block it, could he counter with hoda korosu and kill the Cobra?
Again — perhaps, perhaps not.
Nicholai stepped back. “Then kill me.”
Her eyes flickered with doubt and suspicion. He understood it — her past gave her no reason to trust a man. He said, “I would live for you and kill for you, so dying for you …”
She shook her head, her golden hair shimmering in the lamplight.
“Please, Solange,” he said, “free me from my prison.”
Just as I freed Kishikawa-sama.
He closed his eyes, both to assure her and to summon his tranquility, and breathed deeply. This life was as a dream and when the dream ended there would be another and then another in an endless cycle until he realized perfect enlightenment.
Satori.
He heard her foot turn on the wooden deck, the preparatory move for the thrust, and readied himself for death.
She burst forward.
Into his arms.
“I can’t,” she cried. “God help me, je t’aime, je t’aime, je t’aime.”
“Je t’aime aussi.”
Over her sobs, they heard footsteps crash heavily onto the deck.
156
THERE WERE EIGHT OF THEM and they were coming for the guns.
The black-clad troopers from Signavi’s Vietnamese special forces piled onto the deck and came down the hatchway.
Solange whirled out of Nicholai’s arms, spun again, and slashed the first trooper’s throat. She yanked his body clear and then stabbed the second one in the stomach. The third went to shoot his pistol, but she slashed downward, severing his wrist tendons, and the pistol clattered down the stairs. The shocked trooper grabbed his dangling wrist and stared at her. She used the moment to plunge the knife into his throat. Another trooper vaulted the railing over him and went for her.
Nicholai hit him in midair, their momentum sending them crashing into the bulkhead. Grabbing him by the shirt, he threw him, scooped up the pistol, shot him, and pulled Solange aside just before a burst of machine-gun fire came down the stairs. The bullets bounced crazily around the hold as he shoved her into the bulkhead and shielded her as he reached back with his gun hand and fired up the hatchway.
He could hear the survivors regrouping on the deck, and then heard the metallic rattle and saw the grenade bounce down the hatchway. Pushing Solange down, he dove, grabbed the grenade, and tossed it back up.
The sharp crack of the explosion preceded the screams of gutted men.
Then it was quiet.
“Stay here,” he ordered.
She shook her head. “Claustrophobia. I don’t care for closed spaces. Ever since Marseille, they frighten me. Badly.”
“Stay here anyway.”
He went up onto the deck and saw the dead men. A flat-bottomed swamp boat bobbed alongside. Hearing footsteps behind him, he whirled and saw Solange, the knife caked with dark, congealing blood still in her hand.
“I told you to —”
“You don’t tell me what to do,” she said,