“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
GETTING 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
HIS 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
THE COBRA 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
“YOU 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.”