by Don Winslow
“And my men will bring her to you,” Bay said.
Appropriately, Nicholai thought, to my hiding place — the Swamp of the Assassins.
148
THE RUNG SAT LAY southeast of Saigon, east of the mouth of the Soirap River where it drained into the South China Sea. A wilderness of swamps, mangrove forests, bamboo, and countless little tributaries formed an impenetrable maze to all who didn’t know it well.
The Binh Xuyen knew it well.
This was their birthplace and sanctuary, where their old pirate raids had originated and returned, the place from which their famed assassins emerged to slip into the city, kill, and then slip back again.
Nicholai lay in the bottom of the skiff as it came downriver then turned east on a small channel in the dense swamp. The terrain was surprisingly varied — now a flat, sun-drenched stretch of low vegetation and algae, then a dark, dense stand of mangroves, then a wall of bamboo. This pattern repeated itself for an hour, and then the boat slowed onto narrower channels, pressed hard by the mangroves that loomed beside and above and at times shut out the sky, casting the boat into a diurnal darkness.
A man could get lost in here, Nicholai thought.
Get lost and never find his way out.
Finally the skiff pulled up alongside a houseboat anchored against a line of mangroves. The boat was squat and wide, with open decks fore and aft and a cabin in the center. Binh Xuyen troopers, machine pistols slung over their shoulders, stood on guard. Bay Vien emerged from the aft cabin door and stood on the deck as Nicholai stood up.
“You are nothing but trouble, Michel,” he said, helping him onto the boat.
“Is she here yet?” Nicholai asked.
“No,” Bay said impatiently.
He led Nicholai into the cabin, which had a small kitchen with a gas cooker, a table, and a couple of chairs. A narrow set of stairs led down into the hull where there was a small hold and sleeping quarters.
“You’ll be safe here,” Bay said, “until we can get you on a ship out.”
That was the plan — hide him and Solange here in the swamp until the next night, then take them by boat to a freighter coming out of the Saigon docks.
“Have you heard from her?” Nicholai asked.
“You’re monotonous,” Bay said.
“Answer my question.”
“No,” Bay Vien said.
“I’m going back to look for her.”
“In the first place,” Bay said, “no one will take you back; in the second place, you can’t get back on your own; in the third place, even if you did, you would only be killed. Her karma is her karma now.”
Nicholai knew that he was right.
“You want tea?” Bay asked.
He shook his head, lit a cigarette instead, and sat down in the bamboo chair at the small table.
“Relax,” Bay said.
“You relax.”
“A man in love,” Bay said, shaking his head. He jutted his chin toward the hatchway. “Go get some sleep.”
“I’m not tired.”
“I said go get some sleep.”
Nicholai went down the hatchway into the hold.
The crates were there.
Crates of rocket launchers.
Bay nodded. “I’ll go back to Saigon and see what’s happening. Besides, there are pursers to bribe.”
“I’ll pay it.”
“Yes, you will.” He called for the skiff and left.
Nicholai went down into the hold, lay down on one of the beds, and tried to rest.
His promise to Yu was almost fulfilled, he had money and papers.
Now there was only one thing left to do.
Get Solange to safety.
149
DE LHANDES WADDLED down the aisle of the cinema.
Michel had said that Solange loved the films. The screen was dim, some film noir, he thought, of the type that he couldn’t bear. De Lhandes preferred comedies or period pieces, with low bodices and heaving bosoms.
Then a daylight scene brightened the screen and he saw her in the third row. He slipped into a seat behind her. She was staring up at the screen and weeping as she dabbed a tissue to her eyes.
“Mademoiselle,” De Lhandes whispered. “Michel is waiting for you. Go out the back. There are men to take you to him.”
He saw her neck stiffen with doubt.
“You have no reason to trust me,” he said. “Only that I am an admirer of beauty and, like all cynics, a disappointed romantic. And I am his friend. Go now, Mademoiselle Solange, before it is too late.”
He waited as she decided what to do.
Then she got up, slid down the aisle, and walked out the back door of the theater.
150
GUIBERT WASN’T at the House of Mirrors.
Nor at Le Parc, nor the Continental, nor Le Grand Monde. He wasn’t on Rue Catinat, the Central Market.
He was gone.
Diamond cruised the streets. If he couldn’t find Hel, he’d find someone who would tell him where he could.
151
HAVER FORD WALKED the narrow alleys of Cholon.
If the Corsicans had sent another killer, it meant that Nicholai was still alive, and he figured that Hel would most likely run to a neighborhood where he spoke the language and knew the customs.
But no one had seen a tall kweilo who fit Hel’s description, or at least no one was talking.
152
BERNARD DE LHANDES was looking for a decent meal, reading the sidewalk boards that listed the evening’s fixed-price menus when the men jumped out of the car, grabbed him, and shoved him onto the floor of the backseat.
“Where is your friend?” Diamond asked.
“I-I-I don’t know.”
“Tell me before I hurt you very badly.”
But De Lhandes did make them hurt him very badly. He made them bruise organs and break bones but, in the end, he couldn’t stand the pain.
“Forgive me, Michel,” he wept. “By the sacred blood of Saint Joan, forgive me.”
He told them what they wanted to know.
153
“THE RUNG SAT?” Signavi questioned.
“That’s what the little bastard said,” Diamond answered. “Believe me, he was telling the truth.”
The French paratrooper found the information troubling. “The Rung Sat is Binh Xuyen country.”
Diamond didn’t want to hear it. He’d already gotten the word that La Corse had botched the hit on Haverford, and that the smart-mouthed son of a bitch now knew about his connection to Operation X and the heroin trade. And now Hel had made it out of Saigon, into the so-called Swamp of the Assassins, which could only mean that he was under the protection of Bay Vien.
“I don’t care if he’s in the pope’s living room!” Diamond yelled. “You have troops, send them!”
Signavi shook his head. Americans were so clumsy — they would always use an axe when a stiletto would do. “The Cobra will track him down. We don’t want to get in the way.”
“Yeah? Is the Cobra as good as the guys you sent to kill Haverford?” Diamond asked. “Listen to me — if ‘Guibert’ gets away he takes Operation X with him. It’s over! We’re finished! You think Bao Dai is going to sit around and watch all his money go down the chute?”
He could see Signavi wavering and pressed, “We know that the woman is on her way to Guibert. Send a team, get it done.”
Signavi nodded.
154
JOHN SINGLETON SAT and contemplated the Go board.
He had acquired an appreciation for the game during his days in China, but could find no one in Washington who could give him a decent match, so he preferred to be alone and play both sides.
It was a good mental exercise, disciplining him to see a situation from all perspectives.
Now he looked at the go-kang and pondered the whole Nicholai Hel scenario. He reviewed it from all angles, considering Hel’s origins, his killing of Kang Sheng as well as Voroshenin, the arms connection t
o Liu, Haverford’s Beijing network of spies, Hel’s escape from China into Laos, his liaison with the Binh Xuyen.
He changed his perspective to consider the situation in Vietnam — the intense Viet Minh activity in the north, the relative quiescence in the south since the last failed Communist offensive, the fact that the very dangerous Ai Quoc had been in hiding, that Hel had delivered the weapons to Bay Vien instead of to Ai Quoc, the fact that Haverford had served in Vietnam during the war …
Then there was Diamond, the allegedly secret Operation X, his connection to the Corsican heroin trade, and his visceral hatred for, and fear of, Nicholai Hel …
Now both his agents were on the ground in Saigon, and it would be fascinating to see which of them emerged victorious. He found it amusing that each stone on the go-kang thought that it determined its own moves and never saw the hand that moved them toward their fates.
This Hel, on the other hand …
He did seem to move himself.
155
NICHOLAI HEARD her footsteps on the hatchway steps.
“Solange?”
“Nicholai.”
Her perfume was intoxicating.
Nicholai rolled out of the bed and came to her.
“Thank God,” she said. “I was so afraid …”
Solange pressed herself tight against his chest. He wrapped his arms around her, trapped the knife against her back, and whispered, “Per tu amicu.”
She stiffened, ever so slightly, and he knew.
And felt his heart break.
“It’s you,” he whispered into her hair. “You’re the Cobra.”
Then he let her go and took a step back. The light in the cabin was dim, but he could see in her eyes that it was true. Lying in the bed, waiting for her, he had seen it, and realized that he should have known sooner.
The Cobra is deadly with a blade.
La Corse had recruited her all the way back in Montpellier to kill the German colonel. They had taught her to use a knife and she slashed his throat. They took her to their base in Marseille and used her for other missions.
She kept her association with La Corse, but started to freelance, both her sexuality and her other skills. That night in Tokyo, after the attack in the garden, she came in with a knife in her hand and murder in her eyes.
Were you going to use that?
If I had to.
And you knew how, didn’t you, he thought.
She might have killed him during their romantic rendezvous at the hotel, but she knew that she was under observation and would be a suspect. But, the next day, De Lhandes had told her about the House of Mirrors and she had come, as the Cobra, to kill him. His proximity sense had told him it was someone he had encountered before, but now he truly realized it.
Life as it really is.
Satori.
“Is it Picard,” he asked, “or Picardi?”
“Picardi,” she said.
The Corsicans are the best assassins.
“The story you told me,” Nicholai asked, “how much of it was true?”
“Most of it,” she replied. “The hurtful parts, if it’s any consolation.”
It wasn’t.
“How many men have you killed?” Nicholai asked.
“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, picking up one of the machine pistols from a dead trooper and slinging it over her shoulder. “Now or in the Basque country.”
She stopped as they heard boat motors and the slaps of hulls on the water.
They were coming and coming fast.
“Stay low at least,” he said.
Then he scrambled down the hatchway.
Even from the hold, he could hear the motors getting closer.
He found a tripod, took it and the launcher in either hand, and hurried back up the hatchway.
“Mon dieu,” Solange said, “and what do you intend to do with that?”
“Screw the tripod into the barrel,” he said. “S’il te plaît.”
He trotted back down to the hold, found the ammunition, and came back up with two of the rockets. “Eight-pound highexplosive antitank rockets with a velocity of 340 feet per second, capable of penetrating eleven inches of armor plating at an effective range of a hundred yards. Or so I’m told.”
“Men.”
Now he could make out the running lights of the first boat, and troopers standing in the bow. The boat looked loaded with men.
Nicholai shoved the rocket down the back of the tube, then lay down, adjusted the tripod, and sighted in. Waiting until the boat came inside the hundred-yard range, he took a deep breath and pulled the trigger on the exhale.
The rocket shot out, whooshed through the night air, and plunged into the water behind the speeding boat.
Solange flipped the machine pistol onto full automatic.
Nicholai sat up, reloaded, and settled back in again. He adjusted the sight, waited, and fired.
The boat exploded in scarlet flame.
Men on fire shrieked and leaped into the water.
Solange winced.
The next boat was coming hard.
Nicholai went for more ammunition, came back, and sighted in. The boat was so close he could hardly miss now.
So close he could make out the face of Bay Vien.
157
BAY’S MEN LOADED the crates onto the swamp boat as he examined the carnage on and below the deck.
“You killed these eight men?” he asked.
Nicholai nodded.