Satori - Don Winslow [15]
“You have the mouth of a sailor,” he told her one night without a trace of disapproval.
“But you love my mouth, no?” she answered, and then proceeded to prove to him that he did. Nicholai did love her mouth, her hands, her fingers, sa cramouille, sa rose. He was fast coming to the truth that he simply loved her. One night after a particularly robust lovemaking session, she inhaled her postcoital cigarette and said, “No offense, Michel, but you make love like a Japanese.”
Nicholai was a bit taken aback, but more curious than offended. “Is that bad?”
“No, no, no,” she said quickly. “It is not bad, is just different than … a Frenchman. A bit … comment vous dites … a bit ‘technical,’ no? If you are a Frenchman, you must make love d’une manière plus sensuelle, a bit more like music than science.”
She knew, sadly, that he would soon leave to perform the errand for the Americans. And as a man, he had needs, and would satisfy those needs, perhaps in a brothel. The girls would talk, and if they talked of a Frenchman who made love like a Japanese, it would not do.
“Is this part of my training?” he asked, staring hard at her. He looked hurt. “Are you part of my training?”
“For all your boyish looks,” she said, refusing to lower her eyes in shame, looking right back at him, “naiveté nevertheless does not become you. Are you asking me if I am a whore for the Americans? My darling, we are both whores for the Americans. I fuck for them, you kill for them. Don’t look so hurt, I adore making love to you. Vous me faites briller. You make me shine, no?”
He heard the formal “vous,” as opposed to the more intimate “tu,” and wondered if she perceived their relationship as only business.
In any case, Solange taught him how to make love like a Frenchman.
10
TWO NIGHTS LATER they tried to kill him.
Nicholai was halfway through a difficult kata, “Tiger Burst Through Bamboo,” when his proximity sense told him that he was not alone in the garden. The first assassin — clad all in black, a wicked dagger in his right hand — dropped down the wall in front of him. Nicholai saw his would-be killer’s eyes focus slightly over his shoulder, so knew that there was another assassin coming up from behind.
The dagger thrust came low where Nicholai expected it. He shifted into a cat stance and swung his right hand in a low, outward crescent, sweeping the knife hand away from his body. Then he stepped in, grabbed the attacker by the collar of his gi and pulled him down, pivoted, and slammed his head into the garden wall. He heard the neck break but didn’t stop to look as he ducked under the hatchet blade that the second assailant swung at his head. Nicholai came up and jammed his left hand, poised into a tiger’s claw, into the man’s eyes, the other into his groin. Dropping his left hand, Nicholai locked the elbow of the arm holding the hatchet and lifted himself onto his toes. The arm snapped like dry wood. The hatchet dropped. Nicholai spun so that his back was to the attacker and he drove an elbow into the man’s solar plexus. He released the broken arm, spun again, and delivered a shuto strike to the carotid artery.
The man dropped to the ground.
Nicholai knelt beside him, felt his pulse, and cursed himself for striking too hard. His skill had not returned to the point where he could precisely calibrate the force of a blow, and the man was dead. This was unfortunate, because he would have liked to question him to find out who had sent him and why.
Clumsy, Nicholai told himself, clumsy and imprecise.
You will have to improve.
He went back into the house and used the telephone to dial the number that Haverford had given him for emergencies. When the American answered, Nicholai said, “There are two corpses in the garden. I imagine you will want to remove them.”
“Stay inside. I’ll have a cleanup team there right away.”
Nicholai hung up. Solange was standing in the doorway, looking at him. She wore a simple white silk robe, held in place by a wide silk belt tied in a bow that begged for tugging. A kitchen knife was clutched in her