Satori - Don Winslow [149]
Diamond pulled the trigger.
The muzzle flash blinded Nicholai. He crawled past Solange, and heard Diamond crawling away. He started to go after him, but then he heard Solange moan.
Diamond would have to wait.
He stopped and turned to Solange.
“Are you all right?” he asked her.
“Yes.”
But then he felt the warm stickiness of her blood.
She was bleeding badly from the side. He couldn’t see in the stygian darkness but he could feel.
So could she. “Please don’t let me die down here.”
“I won’t let you die anywhere,” he said.
Another blast rocked the tunnel. Dirt fell into their faces, their eyes, their noses, their mouths. He felt for her face, brushed the dirt away, then turned onto his back and started to pull himself along the tunnel shaft, pulling her behind him.
It was excruciatingly slow and he knew she was losing blood fast. The tunnel was collapsing, they were half buried, and he could only feel his way along, turn his head, and try to smell the way to open air.
He had to do it. He couldn’t let her die.
After an eternity he turned, saw a faint beam of sunlight, and sensed a fleeting breath of fresh air. He pulled until they reached the bottom of the tunnel entrance.
“We’re there,” he gasped.
Now he clawed his way up the shaft with one hand and pulled her with the other. He climbed and fell four times before his hand gripped the surface with enough purchase to pull her weight up behind him.
He collapsed on the surface and pulled her into his arms.
“We’re here, my love,” he said. “We made it.”
But Solange was still.
Limp and lifeless in his arms. He wiped a strand of her golden hair from her green eyes, and closed them.
Then the next bomb hit.
164
HE AWOKE in a bed.
Clean, crisp sheets tight around his legs.
Haverford looked down at him.
“Good morning.”
“Where …”
“You’re in a Saigon hospital,” Haverford said. “A Foreign Legion patrol found you staggering around out in the delta. You were severely concussed, had some second-degree burns, shrapnel wounds, and three broken ribs.”
“Solange?”
“I’m sorry,” Haverford said.
Then Nicholai remembered.
A deep sorrow came over him.
“Why aren’t I in a cell?” he asked, looking around the room. It was impossibly white and clean.
“Ah,” Haverford said. “Your name is René Dazin. You’re a French merchant that the Viet Minh kidnapped. You were very lucky that the bombing raid happened to set you free, my friend, the same bombing raid that killed Michel Guibert.”
“Who made up that story?”
“I did, of course,” Haverford said. “But you might want to get out of the country as soon as you can walk.”
“Which should be when?”
“Might be another month or so,” Haverford answered. “I have a clean passport for you. You recuperate, then you disappear.”
Nicholai nodded, and even that small move made his head throb. But he was heartened that Haverford thought he needed the passport, even though he had Voroshenin’s multiple identities safely stashed with De Lhandes. The American agent, Nicholai thought, will believe he has me on a leash, and he will be wrong. Then he asked, “Diamond?”
“He made it out,” Haverford said. “Rats usually do.”
“Good,” Nicholai answered, relieved that Diamond hadn’t been killed by an impersonal bomb. He would visit Diamond personally and hold him to account. Not only for himself, but for Solange.
Haverford leaned closer and whispered, “Ai Quoc made it too. So did the weapons.”
“You were working with him all the time,” Nicholai said. He saw it now, all of it. Haverford had played a very deep game of Go, and played it well.
“Since we fought the Japanese together,” Haverford answered. “It’s a triple for me — the Soviets and the Chinese at knifepoint, Mao weakened, and a chance for Quoc to take Saigon and end this war before we can get into it.”
“Do your bosses know?”
“I think so,” Haverford answered. “My boss respects victory. I get promoted, Diamond gets put out to graze. Who knows, maybe you and I will get together again sometime for tea.”
“I’d like that.”
“Me too,