by Don Winslow
“But why would Guibert confess to something like that?” Kang asked, his eyes alight with wry amusement. Actually, he could think of a dozen reasons — “Toads Drinking,” “Monkeys Holding a Rope,” “Angel Plucking a Zither,” or perhaps some new technique that had yet to be discovered or named. “And how are the Americans involved in this?”
“Guibert,” Voroshenin answered, “is actually an American agent named Nicholai Hel.”
He told Kang what he knew of the Guiberts and of Nicholai Hel, omitting, of course, his own past with Alexandra Ivanovna.
“Do we know this for a fact?” Kang asked.
“No,” Voroshenin admitted. “But I’m reasonably sure.”
“ ‘Reasonably sure’ is not good enough,” Kang said. “I can’t arrest a foreign national on ‘reasonably sure,’ torture him, and then find out that he really is this Michel Guibert. Even the French might object to that.”
It is tempting though, Kang thought, so tempting. The thought of parading an American spy down to the Bridge of Heaven and having him shot … The titillating image of that bastard Liu following him a few days later … It would solve so many problems. But this “Guibert-Hel” connection — it was tenuous at best.
“What would you need?” Voroshenin asked.
Kang leaned back and thought about it for a few moments. “Perhaps if the father were to tell us this is not his son …”
51
NICHOLAI ROSE BEFORE DAWN, performed ten “Caged Leopards,” and then got dressed to go out for his morning run.
The very real prospect that this might be his last morning sharpened the air, brightened the colors, and lifted the mundane sounds of the city’s waking to the level of a symphony. The rumbling of a truck engine, the jingling of a bicycle bell, the clatter of a trash can being dragged across the pavement all had a clear, crystalline beauty that Nicholai appreciated for the first time.
The trees, then, took on a startling fresh beauty, artful compositions of silver, white, and black, delicately and perfectly balanced, changing tones with the gathering light. The ice on the lake reflected their images back to themselves as a friend reveals to a friend his best qualities.
The morning was truly beautiful, the tai chi players truly beautiful, China itself was truly beautiful and Nicholai realized with some sorrow that he would miss it all if he should, as was probable, die tonight.
But that is tonight, he thought, and this is this morning, and I am going to enjoy every moment of it.
As he ran onto the arched bridge to the Jade Isle, another jogger fell in behind him.
This was new, and Nicholai was aware of the interloper’s footfall behind him. He flexed his hands, preparing them for the leopard paw, if necessary. The runner was catching up with him, and Smiley and the Greyhound were a good twenty yards behind.
“The Dream of the West Chamber,” he heard the runner puff.
“What about it?”
“Be quiet and listen.”
In short bursts, the runner gave him the bones of the story, then said, “Near the end, the sheng and the dan find each other again …”
The runner sang:
I have helped the lovers come together
Although I have suffered hard words and beatings
The moon is rising in its silvery glow
I am the happy Red Maid.
“There will be much noise — gongs, drums, cymbals, then a moment of darkness …”
“Yes?’
“That is your moment.”
The runner picked up his pace and sprinted past Nicholai onto the island, then disappeared around a curve. Nicholai held his own pace and then saw an odd sight.
A lone monk walked toward him on the bridge.
He had a strange gait, as if walking were painful or he had some old injury that still troubled him. He came in small, delicate steps, as an old man would who feared that the bridge was slippery with ice, but as he came closer Nicholai saw that he wasn’t really old.
His eyes were old, though. They stared straight at Nicholai’s as if searching for something, and Nicholai recognized that those eyes had seen much, too much, things that no eyes should be made to see. Eyes that held knowledge that no man should be forced to know.
Nicholai stopped in his tracks.
The monk said softly, “Satori.”
“What?”
“Satori. To see things as they really are.”
The monk turned around and limped back toward the Jade Isle.
Nicholai hesitated and then followed him. “What am I not seeing?”
“The trap,” the monk answered. “And the way out of it.”
The vegetables were delicious, the steamed bun delicious, even the ordinary tea outdid itself.
I should “die” more often, Nicholai thought, if this is what the possibility of imminent death does for the senses. He could only imagine how making love to Solange today might feel. One might die from just the heightened pleasure.
A silly thought, he chided himself. You won’t die from pleasure — you’ll die in the trap, unless you find the way out. But, like all traps — in Go or life itself— the way out is never back the way you came.
Once in, you can only get out of the trap by going through the trap.
Chen arrived to take him to the Ministry of Defense.
“That acrobatic troupe was good last night, eh?” Chen asked, sitting down at the table. Sharing breakfast with Guibert had become a habitual perquisite.
“Superb. Thank you for taking me.”
“Too bad that Russian had to show up.” Chen looked around, leaned across the table, and muttered, “Tell you something?”
“Please.”
“I hate those mao-tzi bastards.”
“I’m not overly fond myself.”
Chen smiled with satisfaction at the shared intimacy. “Good buns.”
“Quite good.”
“I’m sorry you’ll be leaving soon,” Chen said, looking down at his plate.
“Am I leaving soon?”
“Tomorrow.”
“Ah.”
“We should be going.”
The day was now bright and sunny. A warming front had come in —jackets were left unbuttoned, scarves hung loosely around necks, people tilted their faces to catch the warmth of the sun. Nicholai insisted they take a detour into Xidan to buy some roasted chestnuts.
“You’re cheerful today,” Chen observed as they munched on the treats.
“I love China.”
They got back into the car and drove to the Ministry of Defense.
“The payment went through,” Colonel Yu said.
“Of course.”
Yu handed Nicholai a sheaf of travel papers. “Your train to Chongqing leaves tomorrow morning at nine. Please be on time. Rail tickets are difficult to acquire.”
“What do I do when I get to Chongqing?”
“You will be contacted.”
Nicholai looked skeptical. In truth, he couldn’t care less, but the role had to be played out to the end. “You told me you would give me an exact location.”
“I’m afraid that is not possible at the moment,” Yu said. “Don’t worry. We wouldn’t cheat you.”
“It’s a long train trip to Chongqing,” Nicholai answered. “I don’t want to run into some accident. Or find myself wandering about the city and not hearing from you.”
“I give you my word.”
“I gave you my money.”
Yu smiled. “Again, it always comes back to money.”
“I didn’t hear that you declined the payment.”
“What will you do on your last night in Beijing?” Yu asked.
“I’m going to the opera.”
“An imperial relic.”
“If you say so.” Nicholai stood up. “If I get to Chongqing and do not hear from you within twenty-four hours, I will go to the Viet Minh and explain that they were cheated by the revolutionary comrades in Beijing.”
“Comrade Gui
bert, you are an arms merchant …”
“I am.”
“So you will sell these weapons to our Vietnamese comrades.”
“Yes.”
“For a profit.”
“That’s the idea, yes.”
Yu frowned. Torn between candor and courtesy, he finally said, “I do not understand how a man can live without ideals.”
“It’s easy when you get used to it,” Nicholai answered.
“And it does not bother you,” the young colonel said, “that these weapons might be used to kill your own countrymen?”
“I have no country,” Nicholai said, realizing that this was a rare statement of truth.
“The people are my country,” Yu said with practiced conviction.
Nicholai looked at his fresh face, aglow with idealism. With any luck, he thought, he’ll have time to grow out of that.
He walked out of the office and the building.
52
EMILE GUIBERT LEFT his mistress’s flat in Hong Kong’s Western District.
In a nice part of town, the flat was expensive—merde, la femme was expensive — but both well worth it. A man comes to a certain age and success, he deserves a little comfort, not a tawdry assignation in some “blue hotel” over in Kowloon.
He decided to walk to his club for his afternoon pastis. It was a pleasant day, not overly humid, and he thought that he could use the exercise, although Winifred had given him quite the workout.
A lovely girl.
A Chinese pearl, Winifred, delightful in every aspect. Always beautifully dressed, beautifully coiffed, always patient and eager to please. And not some foulmouthed salope, either, but a young lady of refinement and some education. You could have a conversation with her, before or after, you could take her to a gallery, to a party, and know that she wouldn’t embarrass herself or you.
Winifred was the new love of his life, in fact, a new lease on life itself, the very renewal of his youth.
Lost in this reverie, he didn’t notice the three men come in. One stepped around him toward the elevator, the other went to check his mail at the boxes along the opposite wall. The third barred the doorway.
“Excuse me,” Guibert said.
He felt a forearm come around his throat and a cloth held against his face.
53
HAVERFORD SAT in the “situation room” in the Tokyo station and finished his coded cable to Singleton in Langley.
ALL IN PLACE. + 6 HRS. ADVISE PROCEED OR ABORT.
Part of him still hoped that Singleton would call the whole thing off. It was so risky from so many angles. Fail or succeed, Hel could be captured. If captured, he might talk. If he talked, Kang would quickly wrap up the whole Beijing network, from the White Pagoda to St. Michael’s to the Muslims in Xuanwu. Liu could be terminally weakened and China forced even deeper into the Soviet orbit.
“Great rewards demand great risks,” Singleton had said.
Fine, Haverford thought.
In fact, everything was in place.
The extraction team was embedded in the mosque, its leader had successfully been infiltrated into the country. A string of “sleeper alerts” about a Chinese attempt on Voroshenin’s life had been successfully planted into the Soviet intelligence services through double agents and would be triggered after his assassination. A similar string — indicating that the killing was a disinformation plot by the Soviets and laying the blame on an apparatchik named Leotov — had been laid with the Chinese.
As for the assassination itself, Hel had done a brilliant job of luring Voroshenin onto the killing ground. Hel was fully briefed on the site, the opportune moment of the opera, and his “escape route.”
Haverford looked at his watch, a graduation gift from his old man. Five hours and fifty minutes until the opera commenced. An hour or so after that, the termination.
The train was in motion.
Nothing could stop it now, unless Hel backed out — which he wouldn’t — or Singleton called it off, which was unlikely.
Still, Haverford hoped he would and sat waiting for the “abort” cable.
54
VOROSHENIN SAT by the phone.
The damn thing was quiescent and the clock not his friend. Barely three hours now until his appointment with Hel.
The more he thought about it, the more convinced he was that “Guibert” was Hel and the more concerned he became that whatever Hel’s assignment with the Americans, he had really come on a mission of vengeance.
If this were Russia or one of the Eastern European satellites, he would simply have the young man killed. Or if it were a city in Western Europe, he could arrange for his quiet disappearance. Even in China, just a few years ago, a few coins and a whisper in the right ear and the young Hel would be fish food by now.
But not in China these days. Even with the Soviets’ enormous influence, Beijing wouldn’t easily tolerate an unsanctioned killing on its territory. There would be an incident, and an incident could very well send him back to a cell in Lubyanka.
Better there than dead, though, he thought, fingering the pistol he had slipped into his belt that morning before leaving his quarters. If it is Hel, and if he does intend to kill me for some fancied transgression against his slut of a mother, I do not have to play the sacrificial lamb.
They say he killed that Jappo general with a single strike to the throat.
Well, let him try.
I have three bodyguards, all trained in judo, all armed. And if somehow he gets through them … Voroshenin touched the gun butt again and felt reassured.
But why is my hand shaking? He took another sip of vodka. When this is over I shall have to do something about the drinking, he thought. Perhaps go off to one of those spas in the mountains. Clean air, exercise, and all that.
Hopefully it won’t come to my shooting Hel, he thought. Hopefully they will have picked up the elder Guibert, sweated him, and made him admit that his real son died in that car crash. Then I will not have to worry about it at all. I can enjoy the opera knowing that young Hel will be singing a different kind of aria, to a tune of Kang’s composition.
But ring, damn phone.
55
THE OLD MAN WAS tougher than he looked.
“I have met the Sûreté,” he told them, “the Gestapo, L’Union Corse, the Green Gang. What do you bande d’enfoirés have to show me that I haven’t already seen?”
They threatened to kill him.
He shrugged. “I’m old. I take one decent shit every three or four days, get one good hard-on a week, if I’m lucky. I sleep three hours a night. Be my friends, kill me.”
They threatened to hurt him.
“What can I tell you that I haven’t told you?” Guibert answered. “You show me pictures, I’ve told you, yes, that is my worthless son. The one who thinks that money squirts out of chickens’ asses and that you should always hit on sixteen. Hurt me.”
He was a tough old bird, and one that didn’t sing.
“ ‘Is Michel in Beijing’?” he parroted after they had wrenched his thin shoulders almost out of their sockets. “What can I say except that he’s supposed to be. Does that mean he really is? You tell me.”
“What’s he doing there?”
“Supposed to be buying guns,” Guibert said, “but if I know my boy, he’s chasing pussy. Is there still pussy in Beijing? If you’re looking for him, look there. If you don’t find him, look for a pair of loaded dice. He’ll be betting against them.”
“Your real son died in a car accident,” they told him. “This man is an imposter.”
“I don’t know my own son? Why do you bother to ask questions of a man who doesn’t know his own child? How stupid must you be?” Then the old man got aggressive. “This is Hong Kong. There are laws here, not like the shitholes you must come from. I know every cop and every gangster. The tongs call me ‘sir.’ You let me go right now, I’ll forget about this, call it a mistake. You don’t, I’ll be tickling your feet while you’re hanging fr
om meathooks. Now untie me, I have to take a piss.”
They untied him and walked him into the toilet.
The phone rang.
Voroshenin had the receiver in his hand before the ringing stopped. “Yes?”
“He’s tough.”
“So?”
“We think he’s telling the truth.”
Voroshenin didn’t. He looked up at the wall clock. Three hours and fifteen minutes. “Have one more go.”
“I don’t know what to —”
“I’ll tell you what to do,” Voroshenin said.
When Guibert came out of the toilet, Winifred was on her knees in front of the chair, her eyes wide with terror, her mouth wrapped around the pistol barrel that his interrogator held in his hand, his finger on the trigger.
The interrogator looked at Guibert and said, “Three, two …”
56
NICHOLAI EASED into the steaming bath.
Karma’s gift to him, he thought as he lowered himself into the near-scalding water, took a deep breath, and then exhaled, relaxing away the slight pain. Then he lay back and let the hot water soothe his muscles and his mind.
As a boy he would spontaneously slip into a state of total mental relaxation, his mind taking him to lie down in a serene mountain meadow. But the vicissitudes and sorrows of the war had stolen that tranquility from him and he mourned that loss deeply, as he also regretted the loss of his freedom and control over his own life.
The best that he could do now was to control his breathing and clarify his thoughts.
That this was in all likelihood his last night in the trap of life saddened him only because of Solange. Recalling the Buddhist tenet that all suffering comes from attachment, he acknowledged that he was in love with her, in a very Western, romantic way, and that the thought of leaving her was painful.
The thought that Diamond and his minions would escape justice also saddened him, but he comforted himself with the idea that karma was perfect.
So if I live, he thought, I will avenge myself; if I die, let them be reborn as maggots on a dung heap.
