by Don Winslow
Obstacles.
First would be Voroshenin’s guards, but if he performed the strike properly, they would not know anything was wrong for another crucial minute. But he had to consider the possibility of having to fight his way out. There was no way to know how the guards would be positioned, so that would have to be improvised on the spot. But that was the purpose of kata, to train the body to react instantly to any threat, without the fatal necessity of thought.
So he dismissed the guards from his mind.
The hallway outside the boxes should pose no problems. There might be Chinese police, but if the killing of Voroshenin raised no outcry, he should simply be able to walk past them on his “way to the toilet.”
But he mentally slowed his pace, “walking” casually, not as a man who has just killed, but as one who simply needed to empty his bladder.
He walked down the stairs and took a right. At the end of the hallway was a door to the backstage, and there would almost certainly be an employee of the theater, a doorman, to bar the way of adoring fans.
Killing the man would be easy.
But killing the innocent doorman would be a shameful dishonor, out of the question, so now Nicholai mentally rehearsed a nonlethal blow to the side of the neck, to the carotid artery, to disable but not kill. He threw the strike, lowered the man to the floor, and opened the door.
The next door was just to his left, and he stepped out into the cold night air.
Simple, he thought, then chuckled at his self-delusion.
Simple, if you get within lethal proximity to Voroshenin.
If you perform the perfect strike that renders him quietly dead while still sitting up in his seat.
If the guards notice nothing amiss.
If you don’t have to kill three more men and then fight your way through the Chinese police.
If all of it goes your way, it’s simple and easy, but those are a lot of ifs. Small wonder Haverford had given him a one in a hundred chance of success and survival.
And if not? he asked himself.
If not, then that is your karma, your “joss” as the Chinese would have it, and you will be killed.
Are you prepared for that?
Yes.
Kishikawa’s words came back to him. When one is prepared to die, that is settled. There is then only the action to consider. Think then only of success, because failure will take care of itself.
Nicholai sat for another hour and envisioned the entire operation, step by step, going perfectly. He got up, coaxed hot water from the taps, and bathed. Then he dressed and went down into the lobby, where Chen was waiting to inflict more hospitality on him.
46
THE ACROBATS WERE wonderful.
Superb athletes, they performed amazing feats of strength, balance, and courage. It all brought back to Nicholai happier childhood days in Shanghai, going to the street circuses and marveling at the performers.
The show tonight was held under a huge tent, dangerously warmed with gas heaters. The floor was pounded dirt and the audience — even the important officials and foreign guests such as Nicholai — sat on rough wooden benches, ate peanuts and tossed the shells on the ground, but it all added to the ambiance.
The other difference was in terms of theme — the acrobats of Nicholai’s childhood had been colorfully dressed as kings, generals, courtesans, monkeys, dragons, and tigers and performed their tricks to ancient folktales. The performers tonight were clad in PLA uniforms and arranged their tricks around heavy-handed political tableaus such as “The PLA Liberates the People from the Evil Imperialists,” or “The Peasants Successfully Struggle Against the Landlord,” or the ever piquant, oh-so-whimsical “Dijuan Factory #10 Produces a Record Annual Output of Ball Bearings.”
Still, the acrobatics were fantastic and entertaining, even wedged into the relentless propaganda. If the costumes lacked color, the performers did not, and Nicholai found himself absorbed in admiration of their skill. They tumbled, did double somersaults, swung from the tops of bamboo poles, balanced on wires, created impossibly high human towers.
“Amazing, aren’t they?” Voroshenin said in French as he stepped over the bench and squeezed between Chen and Nicholai. “Sorry.”
A somewhat sorry-looking man stood behind Voroshenin, and Nicholai noticed that the Russian didn’t bother to offer him a seat. He was clearly an underling of some sort, but not, judging by his spindly frame, a bodyguard.
Nicholai turned and introduced himself. “Michel Guibert.”
“Vasili Leotov.”
“ ‘Dijuan Factory #10’ is one of my all-time favorites,” Voroshenin observed, ignoring the introductions, and Nicholai couldn’t tell if he discerned irony in his tone. Certainly he could discern the vodka on his breath.
“It’s superb,” Nicholai said.
The circus ring became a sea of red, as some of the performers unfurled enormous flags, then turned them flat as other acrobats used them to leap from one flag to a higher one to a higher one, as if they were climbing the sky on the red clouds of dawn. The audience gasped as the final performer reached the pinnacle. Steadying himself with one hand on a skinny bamboo pole, he used the other to pull a final flag from inside his jacket, and waved it as all the actors sang “We Rise Ever Higher on the Wings of Chairman Mao.”
“Soon,” Voroshenin said, “there will be no art, no grace or charm in this country. Only ‘Mao thought.’ It will be a wasteland.”
“Surely you’re having a joke on me.”
“It will be dull as the proverbial dishwater,” Voroshenin added. He tilted his head toward Leotov, still standing over his shoulder. “Dull as this one, if that’s possible.”
Nicholai felt embarrassed for Leotov, slid over on the bench as far as he could, and asked, “Wouldn’t you care to sit down?”
“He wouldn’t,” Voroshenin interjected. “He is as you see him, a post. Besides, if you aren’t bored enough already, you soon would be with him as a companion. His conversation is as vapid as his face, which strains credulity, I understand. I mean, look at the fellow.”
Leotov’s humiliation was palpable, but he said nothing. Then Voroshenin leaned in toward Nicholai and whispered, in Russian, “Your mother was my whore, Nicholai. I rode her like a sled.”
Nicholai felt the insult burn, but he didn’t flinch. “I’m sorry?”
“I’m sorry,” Voroshenin said. “I lapsed into Russian there for a second. One forgets sometimes what country one is in.”
But had there been the slightest blink? Voroshenin asked himself. The slightest glimmer of self-consciousness in the eye?
Nicholai wondered the same thing. He fought to keep the fury off his face as he asked, “But what did you say?”
Peering back into those green eyes, Voroshenin switched to French. “Just that I’m looking forward to the opera tomorrow night.”
“No more than I.”
“I hope you can still come.”
“Why wouldn’t I?”
Cymbals and gongs clashed as the voices rose to a climax.
The two men held their gaze.
47
HE KNOWS, Nicholai thought.
Chen droned on in his enthusiasm about the acrobatic troupe.
Voroshenin knows.
The car slowed to negotiate a patch of black ice.
He knows my real identity.
Or does he? Certainly, he suspects. Your mother was my whore, Nicholai. I rode her like a sled. Did I react? To the language, the name, the insult? Even for a second? If even for a fraction of a second, Voroshenin would have picked it up.
Assume the worst, he told himself. Assume that Voroshenin now thinks he knows that you are Nicholai Hel. What does that mean? It doesn’t necessarily mean that he knows you are here to assassinate him. It only means that he knows you are not who you claim to be.
Bad enough, but not necessarily fatal.
But why, Nicholai pondered, is Voroshenin keeping the appointment at the opera?
&nbs
p; Because he doesn’t know. He only suspects, which is why he was probing, why he stretched a line of stones deep into my defense. A risky move, because he’s given so much of his thinking away. But Voroshenin is no fool, he must have thought it worth the risk. And was it?
Face it, you don’t know. He’s a chess player, not a Go player, Nicholai thought, cursing himself for not knowing more about the Western game. It was linear, though, he knew that, and geometrical — rich in forward, machinelike thinking, poor in subtlety and nuance. Voroshenin believes that he sacrificed a minor piece — a “pawn,” I believe — to expose a more important piece of mine, and now he invites my countermove.
I’m looking forward to the opera tomorrow night.
No more than I.
I hope you can still come.
Why wouldn’t I?
A lot of reasons, Nicholai thought, including the very real possibility that my purpose here has been discovered, “compromised,” in Haverford’s jargon.
By rights, he knew that he should use one of the dead drops to report this development to the American, but he also knew that he wouldn’t. Haverford might call the mission off — “abort” — and Nicholai didn’t want that.
He wanted to kill Yuri Voroshenin.
Fine, he thought, envisioning the Russian’s florid face as he delivered his adolescent insult.
You play your chess game, I will play Go.
We shall see who wins.
48
VOROSHENIN WAS furious.
Livid with himself.
Clumsy, ham-handed, and stupid, he thought as he pushed open the door of the Russian Legation. How could I have thought he would fall for such an elementary trick?
But was there a glimmer? Just a trace?
He walked up the stairs to his office and immediately went for the vodka bottle. It’s improbable, he told himself. Improbable, unlikely, and so anachronistic, the offended son coming to settle a score older than he is, to redeem his mother’s honor. No one kills for honor anymore, that died with the Romanovs.
And assuming that Guibert is Hel, he doesn’t necessarily know who I am, or that I had any relationship to his mother.
So, if Guibert is Hel, what the hell is he doing here?
In the guise of a French arms dealer.
His paranoia rising, Voroshenin pulled the shades on the window. He sat down, but soon found himself pacing back and forth in the room.
Assume he is Hel, he told himself.
What of it?
Why is he here?
To know that, you must first answer the question of who he’s working for. Well, you know that he was last in the control of the Americans. Did they simply turn him loose after a few years? He killed a Jap general whom they were going to hang anyway, so easy come, easy go?
Highly unlikely.
In the first place, the rigid Americans don’t possess that level of moral flexibility. In the second place, Hel couldn’t obtain a “cover” without professional help and backing. The Guibert cover — if that’s what it is — is both sophisticated and deep. Someone went to a lot of trouble and expense to place Guibert in Beijing, and no intelligence service of any government would do that so some young man with a grudge can pursue his romantic notion of revenge.
For what, then?
Voroshenin walked to the window, edged the bottom corner of the curtain open, and peeked out onto the street. It was empty, quiet, a gentle snow falling.
He let the curtain fall back.
Hel was in American control, but he appears now as a French national.
Is this a French operation? Doubtful — the French were still supine from the war, and more than had their hands full in Vietnam. They were not about to do anything that would bring China into that mess.
All right, so Hel was in American control, appears as a French national, albeit with a Chinese background. Is this a Nationalist operation? Is Hel on loan from the Americans to the Nats, and if so, for what purpose? It didn’t make sense — why would the Nats use a Westerner when they had thousands of disaffected Chinese available?
So that leaves the Americans, Voroshenin concluded.
Don’t dismiss the obvious just because it’s obvious.
Hel was in American control and still is. Quite a useful tool, really — familiar with China, speaks the language. Has Russian and French as well. Born to be a spy, when you think about it. You’d have recruited him yourself, and it’s a pity that Gorbatov didn’t when he had the chance.
So assume Hel is working for Washington.
What’s his task?
His cover as an arms dealer puts him in touch with the Ministry of Defense and he was hosted at dinner by —
Liu.
General Liu.
Mao’s chief and only rival.
Could the Americans be using Hel to make overtures to Liu? Or has he already accepted them? His smile genuine for the first time that night, at last Voroshenin saw the entire board, his next move, and its potential result.
I’m sorry, Alexandra, he thought, your son will have to die under exquisite torture, but that is the cost of allowing oneself to become a pawn in someone else’s game.
He looked at his watch.
It was only midnight.
Kang Sheng would still be up.
49
NICHOLAI SLIPPED OUT OF the hotel.
He simply took the elevator down to the basement, had a pleasant chat, and shared a few cigarettes with the men in the kitchen and then went out the delivery entrance at the back of the hotel.
Then he walked briskly into the Legation Quarter. The streets were almost empty now, this late at night, with most of the Beijingren securely tucked away inside their living units. Lights were on, of course, in the Russian Legation, and Nicholai stood across the street under an elm tree and watched the front door.
A car pulled up and waited, its tailpipe smoking in the cold.
Voroshenin, trailed by his faithful hounds, came out a few minutes later and got into the car, which quickly pulled out.
A nice piece of luck, Nicholai thought, for the move he contemplated was a terrible risk. But Otake-san had taught him that very often not taking a risk was more dangerous than taking one.
Cupping his hands against the bitter wind, he lit a cigarette, moved to a spot under the glow of a streetlight, and waited.
It took twenty long minutes for Vasili Leotov to work up enough nerve to come out. Chin tucked into his collar, hands jammed into his coat pockets, his head on a swivel looking nervously about, he crossed the street.
Nicholai walked slowly away, out of range of the listening devices that doubtless studded the Soviet building. He could hear Leotov’s footsteps crunch on the snow, following him. He shortened his step and slowed his gait, allowing the smaller man to catch up with him.
If I have guessed right, Nicholai thought, I might become a wealthy man.
If I have guessed wrong, I will certainly be a dead one.
50
KANG SAT BACK and savored his Dragon Well tea — the finest in China, supplied only to Mao and himself — as he regarded the Tang Dynasty painting on the wall. The overall effect was sublime, so Kang was more than annoyed by the interruption.
What was that mao-tzi Voroshenin doing here after midnight?
Kang sighed and gave permission to allow him in. Then he put a smile on his face and walked out to greet his unwanted and uninvited guest.
“An unexpected pleasure,” Kang said.
Voroshenin caught the tone. “It’s urgent.”
“Apparently,” Kang said. “Please come in.”
Kang walked him into the large sitting room, which was filled not only with paintings but also with bronzes, rare ceramics, and ancient seals, all liberated from the former possessing classes. His collection of fine art was worth many thousands of yuan; his assemblage of erotica only slightly less valuable in terms of money, far more precious in the influence it purchased with Mao, a fellow enthusiast.
H
ad Voroshenin, the poor lonely fellow, come on some pretext to see if there was new pornography? The Russian looked at the Tang painting, a classically formed depiction of a southern mountain.
“New?” he asked.
“Do you like it?”
“It’s good.”
The mao-tzi wouldn’t know good from garbage, Kang thought. That being the case, he didn’t offer him tea — which anyway wouldn’t be appreciated — but some rice wine instead. The Russian was an incipient drunkard, it would sooner or later kill him, and Kang hoped it was sooner.
The drink having been offered and accepted, the Russian said rudely, “Quite an art collection you have here.”
Kang didn’t like the smirk on his face. “I do what I can to preserve our cultural treasures,” he said, “at least the ones not already stolen by Europeans.”
They both knew that the best collections of Chinese art were to be found in the Hermitage and the Louvre. One day, Kang thought, we shall get them all back. “You said something about an urgent matter.”
“What if,” Voroshenin said, “Liu could be linked to the Americans?”
“What if shit were gold?” Kang responded.
“What if,” Voroshenin countered, “Guibert were made to say that this arms shipment to the Viet Minh was a sham, to cover up something else?”
“Such as?”
“What if he were to confess,” Voroshenin asked, carefully selecting his words, “that the weapons were not for the Viet Minh, but were to be diverted to counterrevolutionaries in Yunnan instead?”
“Then I am very much afraid,” Kang said, “that would implicate General Liu in an imperialist plot to overthrow the People’s Republic. The Chairman would be shocked and heartbroken, of course.”
It was a delightful thought. Kang had been searching for years for a pretext to arrest Liu, one that the army and public would accept, and this dissolute Russian might just have handed it to him.
