Satori

by Don Winslow

  It has possibilities, Haverford thought. “I’ll need an extraction team.”

  “We can do that.”

  “And a dead drop location for an asset in Beijing,” Haverford added.

  “Can you toss a few guns to Xinjiang?”

  “Sure.”

  “I’ll get back to you with details,” Benton said.

  “I’ll come to Hong Kong to work out the details.” He didn’t want Benton fucking this up and he didn’t have much time to finalize a plan and get it to Hel.

  33

  THE WEAPON LOOKED as ugly as it was lethal.

  There is no honor and hence no beauty in it, Nicholai thought. A sword is beautiful for the care and craft that goes into its creation, and honorable for the courage it takes to wield in personal combat.

  But a “rocket launcher”?

  It is ugly in proportion to its destructive power. Anonymously produced by soulless drones on an assembly line in some American factory, it brings no distinction to its owner, just the ability to kill and destroy from a distance.

  Still, Nicholai had to admit as Yu recited the weapon’s particulars, its power was impressive.

  The M20 rocket launcher—a.k.a. the “Super Bazooka” — weighed a mere fifteen pounds and was a little over sixty inches long, half of that being barrel. It fired an eight-pound HEAT rocket that, at a velocity of 340 feet per second, could penetrate eleven inches of armor plating at an effective range of a hundred yards. It could take out a heavy tank, an armored personnel carrier, a half-track, or a fortified pillbox.

  The weapon, basically a tube with an electric firing device and a reflecting sight attached, could be broken down into two pieces for easy carrying by two men. It could be fired from a standing, sitting, or — critically for its intended purpose — prone position. That is, a man could lie in a rice paddy or stand of elephant grass and get off an accurate shot. A well-trained team of two men could fire six rounds inside of a minute, while an elite team could fire as many as sixteen shots in the same period of time.

  “Could one man operate it if he had to?” Nicholai asked.

  “Once it’s on its tripod.”

  “And they are included?”

  “Of course, Comrade Guibert.”

  Nicholai made him open each of the fifty cases and inspected each rocket launcher. He was no expert on these weapons, but a failure to do so would have aroused Yu’s suspicions. No serious arms dealer — as Guibert certainly was — would have gambled on buying five cases of rocket launchers and forty-five cases of mud bricks.

  The weapons were packed in a thin layer of grease to prevent fungus damage to the gunsights.

  “You provide the solvent to clean them?” Nicholai asked.

  “Of course.”

  Fifty of these weapons, Nicholai contemplated, each of them capable of taking out a French tank, half-track, or pillbox, could make an enormous difference to the Viet Minh.

  Perhaps a decisive difference.

  The Viet Minh had prematurely launched a conventional offensive against the French troops on the Day River. Gunned down en masse by superior French firepower and armor, the Viet Minh lost eleven thousand men in just twenty-six days of fighting. Even so, they had almost prevailed and might have done so, had the Americans not intervened with yet another new weapon.

  They called it “napalm,” liquid fire dropped from airplanes, and the Viet Minh were incinerated where they stood.

  Does the American genius for mass destruction know no bounds? Nicholai wondered, recalling the firebombing of Tokyo, and of course the atomic weapons that annihilated Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

  “I’ll take them,” he said, “depending, of course, on the price.”

  Not that he really needed to drive a bargain — Haverford had supplied him with more than enough money — but, again, what kind of arms merchant wouldn’t try to drive the price down?

  Not Michel Guibert.

  “I am authorized to negotiate for the Defense Ministry,” Yu said. “Perhaps over lunch?”

  They repaired to an enclosed pavilion overlooking Longtan Lake.

  The food was quite good. A whole boiled fish in a sweet brown sauce, followed by greens in garlic and then zha jiang ma, thick wheat noodles with ground pork in yellow soybean sauce.

  Nicholai asked, “So what is your price?”

  “What is your offer?” Yu asked, refusing to take the bait of making the first bid.

  Nicholai stated a ridiculously low figure.

  “Perhaps you misunderstand,” Yu replied. “You are not purchasing just the crates, but the contents as well.” He quadrupled Nicholai’s offer.

  “Perhaps I misspoke,” Nicholai responded. “I wish to buy fifty, not five hundred.” But he raised his offer a bit.

  “We have expenses,” Yu said. He gave his new figure.

  “Apparently heavy ones,” Nicholai answered. But now he knew Yu’s real price, for the colonel had shifted in mere arithmetic proportion toward his goal. An unimaginative Go player lacking in subtlety or flair. But Nicholai was eager to conclude this distasteful bargaining, so he raised his offer to a figure just below Yu’s desired one. He was surprised when Yu accepted. It raised Nicholai’s hackles and he wondered why.

  Yu quickly provided the answer. “Now we must discuss transportation.”

  Nicholai feigned interest. Of course he had no intention of actually buying these arms, much less shipping them anywhere. By the time the weapons were ready to go, he would have killed Voroshenin and hopefully made his escape. Still, the game must be played, so he said, “Of course I will pay reasonable shipping charges to some location near the Vietnamese border.”

  Yu nodded. “You will deposit the funds into an account in Lausanne. When we have received the payment, we will give you a location in Yunnan Province. The appropriate army unit will help you to transport the merchandise to the Vietnamese border. Beyond that, it is up to you and your ultimate client.”

  “I will deposit half the money into the Swiss account,” Nicholai replied, “and the other half when the merchandise and myself arrive safely at the border.”

  “Your lack of trust is unsettling.”

  “I am told,” Nicholai responded, “that despite the doubtless heroic efforts of the PLA, the mountains of Yunnan are rife with bandits.”

  “There are a few, very minor counterrevolutionary elements clinging to survival,” Yu answered. “We will wipe these tu fei out soon.”

  “In the meantime,” Nicholai said, “I should not wish my merchandise to be taken from me until I can deliver it to my client. Pardon my rudeness, but I cannot help but think that the local army unit of which you spoke would be even more diligent if it had, shall we say, a rooting interest.”

  Yu set down his chopsticks. “Capitalists always assume that everyone is motivated by money.”

  “And Communists are not,” Nicholai answered. “Hence the bank account in Lausanne. And why do you assume that I am a capitalist?”

  “You are certainly not a Communist.”

  “I’m a Guibertist,” Nicholai responded.

  Yu chuckled. “Two-thirds and one-third.”

  “Done.”

  Nicholai picked up his chopsticks and went back to eating.

  34

  “THE DEAL IS MADE?” Liu asked.

  “Yes,” answered Yu.

  “Good,” Liu said. “And is he still pretending to be this Frenchman, Guibert?”

  “And doing it very well, as a matter of fact.”

  Liu laughed.

  35

  DIAMOND PICKED UP the phone. “Yeah?”

  “It’s me,” the voice said. “Benton. Haverford asked me to bring you up to date.”

  “I’m listening,” Diamond said.

  He chuckled to himself.

  Benton liked his job, was lucky to still have it, and wanted to keep it.

  36

  “YOU ARE A …” Chen searched for the word in Chinese, then decided on French. “… gourmet.”<
br />
  Nicholai shrugged. “I’m French.”

  When he’d returned from his meeting with Yu, a pretty desk clerk at the hotel handed him his key and asked if he needed a suggestion as to a restaurant for the evening.

  “Please,” Nicholai said.

  “May I recommend Hong Binlou?” she asked.

  Chen was quite pleased that Guibert wanted to go to the distinguished old establishment to sample its distinctive Muslim cuisine. One of the perquisites of being an escort to a foreign visitor was the opportunity to dine in restaurants that he otherwise couldn’t afford. Or, even if he had the money, frequent custom of the finer establishments could expose him to accusations of decadence.

  Of course there was no pork, but that was more than made up for by the succulent lamb on wooden skewers, the Mongolian hotpot, and especially the sliced sautéed eel.

  The waiters, all of the Hui people who had migrated from the western provinces generations ago, wore short white jackets, black trousers, and, as Muslims, white pillbox caps. The few women in the place, mostly relatives of the owners, were veiled or wore shawls to cover their heads.

  “Religious superstition,” Chen felt obligated to say, in order to cover himself in political orthodoxy. “You are a Catholic, I suppose?”

  “By birth,” Nicholai replied.

  Halfway through the meal, Nicholai excused himself to go to the toilet. The waiter gave him only the slightest glance as he passed by him near the kitchen and eased through the narrow hallway to the toilet.

  Locking the door behind him, Nicholai relieved himself to satisfy any listening ears, and turned on the tap to wash his hands and cover the sound of lifting the lid of the old water tank. The message, written on cigarette paper, was stuck to the inside of the tank by a piece of gum.

  Nicholai translated the code, committed it to memory, then tore the paper into small shreds, dropped them into the toilet, and flushed.

  “You feel all right?” Chen asked him when he returned to the table.

  “Splendid,” Nicholai answered. “Why?”

  “I was worried that the eel might have upset your stomach,” Chen said.

  “It’s a common dish in my part of France,” Nicholai said.

  “Ah.”

  The waiter was a young man, handsome, with high cheekbones and startling blue eyes. His hand trembled just a little as he handed Nicholai the bill. “Was everything as you hoped, Comrade?”

  “It was everything I’d been told,” Nicholai said, glad that Chen was busy mopping up the last of the red sauce with a steamed bun and didn’t notice the waiter’s anxiety.

  “I am so pleased. I will tell the chef.”

  “Please do.”

  The car and driver were waiting out front.

  “Shall we walk instead?” Nicholai suggested.

  “It is very cold.”

  “We’re well fortified,” Nicholai said, patting his stomach, “inside and out.”

  Chen agreed but was not pleased. A car and driver were major privileges, and now the foreign guest wanted to walk like a peasant. Still, he must be humored — the whisperings were that he had just concluded an important piece of business with the Ministry of Defense.

  Shoes crunching on the snow, Nicholai listened to the rhythm of his footfalls as he reviewed Haverford’s instructions in his head.

  Complete the termination. Run out of the theater, through the market, and into the Temple of the Green Truth. The extraction team, anti-Communist Hui Muslims, will be waiting for you. They will take you by truck to the port of Qinhuangdao, where a fishing boat will take you out to an American submarine in the Yellow Sea. Good luck.

  Good luck indeed, Nicholai thought. It would take insanely good luck even to get out of the opera house, never mind make it through the narrow streets to the mosque. And then would the “extraction team” be able to get him through the multiple checkpoints all the way out to Qinhuangdao?

  Doubtful.

  But there was little point in dwelling on the unlikelihood.

  37

  NICHOLAI GOT UP for his morning run.

  This time Smiley and the Greyhound were ready for him, and Nicholai wryly noted that they were now wearing running shoes, at least the PLA version of them.

  Nicholai didn’t really like running — it seemed a dull, repetitive exercise, lacking the excitement of cave exploration or the demands of “naked kill” kata, but he supposed that it served a cardiovascular purpose.

  Hitting a stride, he turned his mind to the challenge of killing Voroshenin. The Russian had a box at the theater, which provided the necessary privacy but would be easily secured. Doubtless his three bodyguards would be present, as would the usual Chinese security, both plainclothes and regular police.

  Voroshenin’s guards will doubtless search me, Nicholai thought, before allowing me into the box next to their master, so I can have no kind of weapon on me. That’s not particularly a problem, he told himself; in fact, it’s the precise reason you were selected for this assignment and are now jogging through the brisk Beijing air instead of rotting in your Sugamo prison cell.

  The killing itself would be relatively easy — at some point Voroshenin would lean toward the performance on the stage, thereby exposing his neck or throat to a lethal strike. If this were a suicide mission in the Japanese style, there would be nothing further to consider. Nicholai would simply prepare himself for death and that would be that.

  But given that you do not prefer to die, he thought as he turned north toward Beihai Park, you must then consider how you are going to dispatch Voroshenin and get out of that box, never mind the building.

  The theater will be dark, with the bright lights focused on the stage, so that was an advantage. Then there is the noise. Beijing Opera, with its drums, gongs, and shrill vocalizations, seemed to the uninitiated a migraine-inducing cacophony that would easily drown out the sound of Voroshenin’s dying. (Although Nicholai hoped to reduce that anyway with an efficient strike.)

  He entered the park and then decided to give his followers the gift of a little variety by taking the west instead of the east path around the lake. It’s the least that I can do, he thought, for getting them up so early, and there is no scheduled dead drop on the bridge anyway.

  But, he thought, what if I can kill Voroshenin without anyone noticing at all? Then I could simply get up and walk out, followed only by my Chinese handlers, whom I could then leave behind in the hutongs of Xuanwu before disappearing into the mosque.

  Is it possible? he asked himself as he jogged along the lake’s edge.

  Of course it is, he thought, hearing the voice of General Kishikawa. Never consider the possibility of success—consider only the impossibility of failure.

  Hai, Kishikawa-sama.

  He reviewed the dozens of methods that naked kill offered to dispatch an opponent from close range without undue fuss. Then he sorted them into categories based on his potential situation — sitting to the right of Voroshenin, to the left, behind him, or, a bit more difficult, if he were separated by a seat with a guard or another guest between him and his target.

  Difficult, yes, but not impossible.

  Only failure is impossible.

  Unthinkable.

  As he rounded the northern edge of the lake, Nicholai broke into a sprint to break up the boredom but mostly to see what sort of speed the Greyhound really had. It might come to that — a footrace to create space and time to lose the man in Xuanwu.

  The Greyhound lived up his moniker. He accepted Nicholai’s challenge and stayed with him for the first minute or so, but then Nicholai took it up another notch, gained ground again, and noted that the Greyhound couldn’t catch up.

  So it is possible, Nicholai thought as he slowed down so as not to cause his followers any undue alarm.

  It is possible to do this thing and live.

  Back at the hotel, he stripped off his sweaty clothes, took a quick bath in water that could only achieve tepid, dressed, and went downstairs for
a spare breakfast of warm soy milk and pickled vegetables. He had been eating too much and too richly, his body felt consequently dull and slow.

  Chen arrived a few minutes later. He sat down, barked an order for tea, and looked at Nicholai unhappily.

  “You like to exercise,” he accused, dropping all pretense that his guest was not under constant surveillance.

  “Is that a problem?”

  “It is self-indulgent.”

  “I had thought quite the opposite.”

  Chen’s mug of tea arrived at the table. “It is self-indulgent,” he explained, “in the sense that it uses up the people’s resources that could be better spent elsewhere.”

  “Such as lounging around the lobby?” Nicholai asked, wondering why it was so much fun to bait Chen.

  “My men are very busy,” Chen said. “They have a lot to do.”

  “Comrade Chen, I agree with you completely,” Nicholai said. “It is a total waste of precious time and resources for your men to follow me about —”

  “They are not ‘following’ you,” Chen huffed, “they are ‘protecting’ you.”

  “Certainly it is a waste of resources to offer protection in the new people’s society,” Nicholai observed blandly, “where crime is an anachronism that has been relegated to the imperialist past.”

  “They protect you,” Chen insisted, growing more agitated, “against counterrevolutionary agents.”

  “Ah,” Nicholai said. He bowed slightly. “I now realize the mistake in my thinking. Please accept my apologies for my thoughtlessness. I shall cease my morning run.”

  “No,” Chen said, softening. “I just wanted to make you aware … Is that all you’re having for breakfast?”

  “It was,” Nicholai answered, “but now I am thinking perhaps some steamed buns? With red bean paste?”

  “Only if you want.”

  “Only if you will share them with me.”