140
S
OLANGE SAT
on a stool in front of the mirror and carefully applied her eyeliner.
Bao Dai liked it a little thicker than she preferred — the emperor went for that smoky, cinema look.
Fair enough, she didn’t care.
But in the light of morning she wondered how much longer would he find her intriguing, attractive? What would happen when she had no new tricks to show him and he grew bored with the old ones? The same thing, she knew, that always happened. He would start to find fault, correct her grammar, criticize small things about the way that she dressed, and then he would say he was only teasing. He would stop laughing at her quips, grow impatient with the time she took to get ready, his eye would wander to the next new thing.
C’est l’amour.
She didn’t really care for Saigon. Too humid, and the air was always thick with intrigue. It was a hothouse, and she found it all rather suffocating. Sometimes it occurred to her to go back to France — not to Montpellier, with its memories, but to Paris or maybe Lyon. The Puppet Prince kept talking about a trip to Paris. Perhaps she could keep him on the hook until they were there, and then let him grow bored with her and leave her.
With a stipend, of course.
Is Nicholai Hel really dead?
The thought struck like a punch to the stomach. Her hand quivered and she had to hold her right wrist with her left hand to steady the pencil.
But is he really dead and is it my fault? Was our indiscretion discovered, did the emperor find out that his crown had horns and order Nicholai killed out of jealousy? No, she thought, if Bao Dai had done that he couldn’t have resisted telling me, or at least hinting at it. And his ardor in the bedroom has certainly not diminished.
Solange was familiar with the behavior of men who suspected they’d been cuckolded. They were sullen and ridiculous — wanting sex but not wanting to dip their pens in a contaminated inkwell. They alternately sulked and strutted, and then either went away or came into bed, depending on how she manipulated them, of course. But Bao Dai had been his usual cheerful, unabashedly lustful self.
Tonight she would go with him again, out to dinner somewhere and then doubtless to Le Grand Monde for more gambling. Just as doubtless to bed, where she had better devise some new treat to keep him interested.
That is unless he has found out, and then he could just as well beat me, or take me somewhere to be killed.
If Nicholai isn’t dead, where is he?
She was thinking this when there was a soft knock on the door. The maid, finally bringing the hand cloth she had requested an hour ago.
“Come in!” she yelled from the bathroom.
In the mirror she saw the bearded dwarf, De Lhandes.
141
“A
RREST HER,”
Diamond said again.
“For what?” Bao Dai asked.
“If for nothing else,” Diamond insisted, “disrespecting you.”
“That is a shame,” Bao Dai agreed, “but hardly a crime.”
The argument in Bao Dai’s private office in the palace had gone on for quite some time and the emperor was starting to tire of it. He did not like this American. Well, he did not like any Americans, but they were now paying the bills, would soon displace the French, so he was obliged to listen. This “Gold” seemed to have a personal grudge against Solange and Guibert. As to the former it was difficult to feel animosity, as to the latter it was virtually unavoidable.
“She knows where he is,” Diamond pressed. “Give me some men, let me take her and get the truth out of her.”
“And what if she won’t tell you?” Bao Dai asked.
“She will.”
Despite his better instinct, Bao Dai had to acknowledge that the idea had some appeal. The woman had, after all, cuckolded him, and he felt it keenly. Worse, his humiliation would soon be the topic for dirty whispers and salacious chuckles all over Saigon. So the thought of Solange under the tender care of the Tiger was not without its pleasures.
There were more practical reasons for seeking her help in locating “Guibert.” The flow of opium brought with it a river of gold. When added to the healthy inducements that the Americans were now paying, it all amounted to vast wealth. But the
amerloques
might stop paying if it became public that he was profiting from the heroin that flooded their streets.
His position in the palace was tenuous. The French might seek to replace him; if not, the Americans. Then there was his ally and partner in crime, Bay Vien, who was helping him route money out of the country through L’Union Corse. Already he had massive bank accounts in Switzerland and landholdings in France, Spain, and Morocco, against the time that the Europeans threw him out or, more likely, the Viet Minh won the war.
But his security would be threatened if Operation X were exposed, and it was certainly possible that Solange was in league with Guibert to do just that.
“Pick her up,” he said.
Diamond smiled. “Right away, Your Excellency.”
“But hurt her as little as possible,” Bao Dai said, more to soothe his own conscience than from any hope that this brutal man would calibrate his efforts.
“We’ll leave no scars,” Diamond assured him. “And her end will look like suicide. An overdose, perhaps. She wouldn’t be the first French actress to —”
“I don’t want to know,” Bao Dai said.
142
G
ETTING INSIDE
the House of Mirrors unseen was as nothing, even in the daylight of morning.
Exhausted from the night’s exertions, whores sleep in the morning, soundly and sweetly, and the guards around the brothel were equally somnolent in the rising heat. Moisture masks sound as surely as dryness enhances it, and in the wet morning the Cobra was able to slip through the lax security.
It took time and patience, but what didn’t?
The prey’s room was at the end of the hallway. The Cobra already knew this but didn’t need to know, because the faint odor was discernible even behind the closed door. A Westerner simply smells different from an Asian, and there were no other Europeans in the brothel in the early morning.
The Cobra paused in the hallway and listened.
The prey was asleep, so this would be easy.
There were no inside locks on whorehouse doors, in case security needed to get in quickly to aid a beleaguered girl. This would be a simple matter of quietly opening the door, dispatching the deceased in his sleep, and leaving out the window.
The Cobra moved forward and pulled the knife.
143
H
IS PROXIMITY SENSE
alerted him.
Nicholai was meditating, trying to recover the long-lost tranquil state of his boyhood, when he became aware of the footfalls in the hallway.
So soft as to be almost undetectable.
The light gait of a tiny Asian courtesan? he wondered. Had Momma sent someone, despite his wishes to the contrary? He lay still and listened, allowed his proximity sense to focus on the target. As he did so, the steps stopped.
Perfect silence.
But Nicholai knew.
It wasn’t a whore, but a predator.
Nicholai slid off the bed to the side opposite the door. He flattened himself on the wooden floor and waited. The slightest trace of a scent came from the hallway.
But the door never opened.
The hunter had sensed the prey’s awareness and backed off, and Nicholai realized that this was no ordinary hunter.
144
T
HE
C
OBRA COILED
in the bushes outside the window.
The prey had been flushed, and if it fled, would come this way.
But the prey didn’t come.
The Cobra waited for a while, then sneaked away.
145
“Y
OU WISHED TO SEE ME,
monsieur?” Momma asked.
“I wish to see Bay Vien,” Nicholai answered.
“He is hardly your butler,” Momma said, a tad annoyed, “and besides, he has asked
me
to see to your every need.”
“Very well,” Nicholai answered. “I need to leave. I have been discovered here.”
“Impossible!” Momma thundered, deeply offended. “No one in my establishment would breathe a word, I assure you!”
More likely it was De Lhandes, Nicholai thought, and I played the wrong stone and misjudged his character. I will deal with him another time, but for now this place has been compromised and I have to find another. “Madame, I must depart.”
“It is not safe for you out there!”
“It is not safe for me in here,” Nicholai said. “Did you send a girl to me a little while ago?”
“No, monsieur, you said —”
“Quite so,” Nicholai answered. “Did you send anyone?”
“No.”
“Well, someone came,” Nicholai said, “with the intent, I believe, of killing me.”
Whoever had come was a professional, Nicholai knew, who realized that he had been discovered and then laid a trap outside the window. He could sense him out there, and later, when Nicholai sensed that he had withdrawn, he had looked out the window to see that the bushes were bent down and the slightest trace of footprints were still extant.
There was something else lingering … something that his proximity sense warned him of …
Momma drew in a breath of apparent shock. “I am devastated, monsieur! Devastated!
Désolée!”
“Apologies are unnecessary, madame,” Nicholai answered, “but I need to leave right away.”
“I will telephone —”
“By the frothing jism of Jove, let me pass, sir!”
Nicholai heard De Lhandes’s indignant voice echo down the hallway.
“I will have him —”
“Let him through,” Nicholai said.
A few moments later, an even more than usually tousled De Lhandes came into his room.
“I thought you betrayed me,” Nicholai said.
“I thought about it, believe me,” De Lhandes answered.
“Why didn’t you?”
“I’m not entirely certain,” De Lhandes responded, “and were I you — a tantalizing concept now that I think on it — I wouldn’t advance that query too much further less it impel me to change my mind — a great flaw of mind, by the way, this dithering to and fro — and market you like a hung hog in a
boucherie.
But what made you suspect that I had played the Judas?”
Nicholai told him about what he had sensed in the hallway.
De Lhandes frowned. “The Cobra.”
“While I usually find your non sequiturs charming —”
“There is a rumor,” De Lhandes said, “more of a legend, really, although the distinction between those two qualities is vague at best when one considers —”
“For God’s sake, man.”
”— of someone they call ‘the Cobra,’ “De Lhandes said. “Supposed to be absolutely deadly with a blade, and … this is not good news, I’m afraid … it is whispered in certain circles that the Corsicans are, collectively, the Cobra’s chief employer.”
“L’Union Corse.”
“Just so, by the cursed blood of Bonaparte, may it boil in hell,” De Lhandes said.
So it’s the Corsicans, Nicholai thought. Their first attempt turned into a bloody burlesque, so they decided to hire their best talent for the next attempt.
But why?
Realizing that this wasn’t the time to ponder that question, he asked, “Did you see her?”
“She said she will come to you.”
“And the papers?”
“Safely stored, Michel.”
146
D
IAMOND LEFT THE HOTEL
frustrated and angry.
The blonde bitch that had cuckolded the emperor wasn’t in her room.
He put men out on the Saigon streets.
Himself, he went to lead the search for Nicholai Hel.
147
B
AY
V
IEN WALKED
into Nicholai’s room at the brothel and said, “You have to leave now.”
“Not until I hear from her.”
“The Sûreté are coming,” Bay argued. “Don’t just think of yourself. You’re endangering everyone in this house. We’ll keep looking for her, we’ll bring her to you.”
It’s true, Nicholai thought. He had no right to do that. “Where are we going?”
Bay told him.
“What about Solange?” Nicholai asked. “She thinks I will be here.”
“I’ll get word to her,” De Lhandes offered.
“And my men will bring her to you,” Bay said.
Appropriately, Nicholai thought, to my hiding place — the Swamp of the Assassins.
148
T
HE
R
UNG
S
AT 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.