Satori by Don Winslow Read Free Book Online

understanding.
    The “cleanup” crew arrived before Nicholai and Solange could finish a second drink. Haverford, uncharacteristically dressed in an untucked shirt and blue jeans, came in through the kitchen door. “My God, are you okay?”
    “I’m fine,” Nicholai answered.
    “What the hell happened?” Haverford asked.
    Nicholai told him about the assault, omitting the details of his counterattack, only saying that he was sorry to have killed the second man. He could hear the soft sounds of the crew working outside, removing the bodies, wiping up the blood, restoring the pebbled paths to their pristine order. As if, he thought, nothing had ever happened.
    The head of the crew came in, whispered something to Haverford, and left.
    “They were Japs,” Haverford said.
    Nicholai shook his head. “Chinese, or at least in the employ of the Chinese.”
    Haverford looked at him curiously.
    “The Japanese don’t use hatchets,” Nicholai explained. “The Chinese do, and only Chinese tongs, typically. Besides, no Japanese assassin would have fallen so easily for “The Angry Monk Paints the Wall.” Someone in China wants me — or Michel Guibert — dead.”
    “I’ll get on it,” Haverford answered. “And I’ll increase security around here.”
    “Don’t,” Nicholai said. “Security will only draw attention. The interesting question is, How did they know where I was.”
    Haverford frowned and Nicholai enjoyed his discomfiture, a welcome crack in the wall of his confidence, almost worth a near death to see. The agent said, “We should probably move you.”
    “Please don’t,” Nicholai answered. “It’s pleasant here and there’s really very little danger. If the assassins were Japanese, they would try again and again until they succeeded. But the Chinese think differently, they would never repeat a failed stratagem. I’m safe until I leave here.”
    Haverford nodded. “Could I have some of that scotch?”
    After Haverford and the cleanup crew left, Nicholai and Solange went to bed but did not make love. Neither of them felt particularly sexual after the events of the evening. They lay in silence for a long time until Nicholai said, “I am very sorry. Please accept my apology.”
    “What for?”
    “For bringing bloodshed into your home.”
    Solange could see the shame on his young face. Truly, it was the end of youth, this killing business. She knew that any decent person who still had a soul felt revulsion at the taking of life. And she knew that she couldn’t remove his pain, only share it with him, make him know that he was not a monster, but a flawed human being trying to exist in a flawed world.
    “Do you think,” she asked, “I have not seen bloodshed before?”
    Her head on his chest, his arm around her, she told him her story.

    She was a beautiful child, the pride of the quartier. Even as a little girl her skin, her eyes, her hair, the perfect bone structure of her face made her a treasure. As she grew into adolescence, the men of the neighborhood stole shamed, sidelong glances while strangers in the city at large were not so polite, verbally expressing their desires in graphic terms.
    Mama guarded her daughter’s virtue zealously. She gave her a cultured, religious education with the sisters, took her to church every Sunday and on all days of holy obligation. Most of all, she went to great lengths to keep from Solange the knowledge of how her nice clothes and new pairs of shoes were paid for.
    There was sometimes a little money left over for Solange to go to the cinema, and she would sit in the lovely, cool darkness, watch the silver fantasies play in front of her, and dream of one day becoming an actress herself.
    Everyone said that she was certainly pretty enough.
    Her mother disapproved — actresses were little better than whores.
    Solange met Louis at a formal dance held between their two schools, and she found him distressingly attractive. He was tall and thin, with wavy brown hair