Satori - Don Winslow [150]
“Sayonara, Haverford-san.”
Nicholai lay back and looked out the window at the pretty garden in the courtyard outside. Slashes of silver rain started to fall, the beginning of the wet season.
The beginning of a lot of things.
He had a new identity, the means to effect his revenge, access to the Ivanov fortune, not to mention the money he won from Bao Dai. After settling matters with Diamond and his cohorts, he could start a new life.
If indeed, he thought, there is such a thing as a new life without Solange.
There is, he thought, there must be, because you are alive and that is your karma. And it is your karma also that you are free now, truly free.
But to do what? he asked himself. How do you use your freedom? You are a killer, a warrior, a samurai — no, not a samurai, for you are not attached to any master. You are a ronin, a wanderer, an individual. So what does the ronin do now? How do you spend this life that has been restored to you?
You begin by killing Diamond, he decided, and then you go on to rid the world of as many Diamonds as you can. The men who kill the innocent — who torture, intimidate, brutalize and terrorize in the name of some “cause” that they believe in more than their own humanity.
He heard Kishikawa’s voice.
Hai, Nikko-san, it is a good way to spend a life.
He looked out the window and saw the hard rain shear a leaf from a branch. The leaf fluttered to the ground, shimmering gold and green in the rain.
Satori.
Acknowledgments
First, to Richard Pine and Michael Carlisle, for e-mailing to ask if I knew the meaning of the word shibumi, and for all their enthusiasm, counsel, and support; to Alexandra Whitaker, for her gracious cooperation and generosity; to Graham Greene, for writing the great Saigon novel; to Howard R. Simpson, whose Tiger in the Barbed Wire was essential reading; to Mitch Hoffman for being such a kind, patient, and perceptive editor.
Most of all, of course, to Rodney William Whitaker, a.k.a. Trevanian — I hope I did you proud, sir.
Author’s Note
Three summers ago I was sitting in my room at Oxford University (I was there to speak to a group of international students) when I received an e-mail from my agent, Richard Pine, that said, “Does the word shibumi mean anything to you?”
I thought, What are these guys doing back in New York, crossword puzzles?
But I wrote back helpfully, “It means ‘understated elegance’ in Japanese.”
Richard responded, “How did you know that?”
I answered with what I thought was obvious: Back in the day there had been a famous book called Shibumi, which a bunch of my friends and I just gobbled up. It featured an assassin named Nicholai Hel who was, inter alia, an expert in the Japanese game of Go. We all took up the game (I was terrible at it) and played it well into many nights. I also recalled that Hel had a villa in the Basque country that he tried to imbue with the spirit of shibumi. The book, I needlessly typed to Richard, was written by an author whose pen name was Trevanian.
Figuring that I had put this curious correspondence to bed, I turned on the electric kettle to make myself a cup of Nescafé. It was a typical English summer day with the rain pelting against the window like the clacking of an old typewriter, and I was looking to the coffee to keep the chill off as I searched for a pair of dry socks and a snorkel with which to venture out for my next lecture. So, in truth, I was a little annoyed when I heard the bong of another e-mail summons and thought that, prominent literary agents that they are, Richard and his cohort Michael Carlisle at Inkwell could probably figure out a ten-letter word for “total destruction” without my help.
Richard’s message read, “How would you like to be the next Trevanian?”
Well, I’m not, and nobody will be.
Rodney Whitaker, aka Trevanian, had such a unique and powerful voice that an attempt to imitate him would leave any writer looking like the second runner-up at a third-rate comedy club’s open mike night.
So I approached the possibility