by Don Winslow
“As life dictates, I suppose.”
“Not at all,” Xue Xin answered.
“What do you mean?”
“It has stopped raining,” Xue Xin observed in response. They went back to work on the path.
The next day Xue Xin observed, “You attack the vines as if they are your enemy.”
“Are they not?”
“No, they are your allies,” Xue Xin answered. “Without them, you would not have a useful task to perform.”
“I would then have another useful task,” Nicholai answered, annoyed.
“With another set of ally-enemies,” Xue Xin said. “It is always the same, my Eastern-Western friend. But, by all means, if it makes you feel better, attack, attack.”
That night, lying in his kang, lonely and missing Solange, Nicholai had a crisis of the mind and soul. Raised as he was, he was familiar with basic Buddhist philosophy — only the unfamiliar would call it a religion, or the Buddha a god — that all suffering comes from attachment, that we are prisoners of our longings and desires that keep us bound to the endless cycle of life, death, and rebirth. He knew the Buddhist belief that these longings make us take negative actions — sins, if you must — that create and accumulate bad karma that must be ameliorated through the lifetimes, and that only enlightenment can free us from this trap.
He got up, took his flashlight, and made his way to Xue Xin’s cell. The monk was in full lotus position, meditating.
“You wish to trim vines by moonlight?” Xue Xin asked. “Very well, but do it without me, please.”
“I want my freedom.”
“Then trim vines.”
“That is glib,” Nicholai answered. “I expect more from you than Zen riddles.”
“You are suffering?”
Nicholai nodded.
Xue Xin opened his eyes, exhaled a long breath as if to reluctantly end his meditation, and then said, “Sit down. You cannot find enlightenment, you can only be open to it finding you. That’s satori.”
“And why you chose it as a code word,” Nicholai said. “Back in Beijing.”
“You needed to see things as they really were,” Xue Xin answered. “Until then, there was no helping you.”
“If you cannot find satori, how—”
“It might come in a drop of rain,” Xue Xin continued, ignoring the question, “a note from a faraway flute, the fall of a leaf. Of course, you have to be ready for it or it will pass unnoticed. But if you are ready, and your eyes are open, you will see it and suddenly understand everything. Then you will know who you are and what you must do.”
“Satori.”
“Satori,” Xue Xin repeated. Then he added, “If our thoughts imprison us, it stands to reason that they can also set us free.”
Yu came to see him the next morning.
The Chinese had accepted his offer.
94
THE NORMAL ROUTE of arms shipments from China to Vietnam, Yu explained, was through Lang Son, across the border, and directly into the north of Vietnam, where the Viet Minh had secure sanctuaries in the mountainous jungles.
But they were not going to take that route.
The rocket launchers were needed in the south, not the north.
“That is information that our enemies would pay dearly to obtain,” Yu said.
Indeed it is, Nicholai thought. Since its last disastrous effort in the south, the Viet Minh had confined their activities to the north. But now it appeared that, if armed with the new weaponry, they were planning to launch a new southern front.
The northern Viet Minh were dominated by the Soviets, the southern were more independent or allied with China. A successful southern offensive would shuffle the geopolitical deck in Asia.
Yu was playing a deep game.
Given the fact that the weapons had to go to the southern Viet Minh units, there was only one possible route, down the Lekang River into Laos.
It would be no easy feat, he explained. The Lekang ran through deep gorges with boiling rapids and sharp rocks that could pierce the hulls of boats like eggshells. The river was not easily navigable until south of the town of Luang Prabang, deep into Laos.
Luang Prabang itself would present problems. They would have to switch boats there for the rest of the journey, and the area was rife with spies and French special forces.
And then there was the Binh Xuyen.
“What’s the Binh Xuyen?” Nicholai asked.
“Pirates,” Yu answered.
“Pirates?” Nicholai asked. It seemed a tad anachronistic.
Originally river pirates from the vast Rung Sat marshes south of Saigon, the Binh Xuyen, now opium merchants, virtually controlled that city. Their leader, a former convict named Bay Vien, supported the Viet Minh, but had changed sides and was now a close ally of the puppet emperor Bao Dai and his French masters. As a reward, Bay Vien controlled drugs, gambling, and prostitution in Saigon, and used the resulting vast wealth to acquire modern arms and equipment.
“That’s Saigon,” Nicholai said. “What does Bay Vien have to do with Laos?”
“It’s where the opium comes from,” Yu answered.
The Viet Minh used to buy raw opium in the mountains east of Luang Prabang and sell it to buy weapons, but through bribery, intimidation, and assassinations, the Binh Xuyen had virtually taken control of the Laotian opium trade.
Luang Prabang swarmed with Binh Xuyen. Yu went on, “A Viet Minh agent will meet you there and escort you into Vietnam.”
Nicholai noted the shift to the second-person singular and mentioned it.
“This is why we require your services,” Yu said. “My superiors have decided that they cannot take the risk of my getting captured in French territory.”
He told Nicholai how he would be contacted in Luang Pra-bang and later in Saigon, and then resumed his briefing.
In Laos, the Lekang changed its name to the Mekong as it flowed through Cambodia into the Mekong Delta of Vietnam. The delta would be a challenge — not only would they have to evade the patrols of the French army and the Foreign Legion, but they would have to make their way through a network of blockhouses and forts.
Worse still, the Mekong Delta was patrolled by well-armed militias allied to the French occupiers.
“Where do I deliver the weapons?” Nicholai asked.
“We don’t know.”
“That would make it difficult.”
Yu explained, “In Saigon you will be told where to rendezvous with a Viet Minh agent code-named Ai Quoc, to whom we will deliver the weapons. Quoc is one of the most wanted men in the country, in hiding even now. He’s survived a score of assassination attempts and the French have a huge reward on him. You won’t be told his location until the last possible moment.”
Nicholai mentally reviewed the obstacles — the river, the Binh Xuyen, the French, their Vietnamese militias, and then locating the elusive Ai Quoc.
“So basically,” he said, “this is a suicide mission.”
“It does have that aspect,” Yu answered. “If you want to change your mind, now is the time.”
“I don’t.”
“Very well.”
“We have an arrangement, then?” Nicholai asked.
Yu shook his hand.
Nicholai found Xue Xin at his usual task of trimming vines.
“I came to say goodbye,” Nicholai said.
“Where are you going?”
“I’m not sure,” Nicholai answered, then decided that he owed a better answer. “To find my satori.”
“And if you don’t?”
“Then I will keep my eyes open,” Nicholai answered.
“We will meet again,” Xue Xin said. “In this life or another.”
Nicholai felt an emotion welling up inside him, something he had not felt since the death of General Kishikawa. “I cannot tell you how much you have meant to me.”
“You don’t need to,” Xue Xin said. “I know.”
Nicholai knelt and bowed, touching his forehe
ad to the ground. “Thank you. You are my teacher.”
“And you mine,” Xue Xin said.
Then the monk knelt back down and resumed his work, serene in the knowledge that Nicholai Hel had determined his destiny.
We will meet again, he thought.
95
YU HAD LEFT the crates of weaponry in the care of a local battalion commander.
Colonel Ki’s belly hung out over his belt, an indication that life was good for a commander in the remote hills of Yunnan. He treated Yu and Nicholai to a very good lunch of fish, vegetables, and mounds of rice, served by an orderly who virtually salivated as he presented each dish.
“I’ll take command of a squad of your soldiers,” Yu said to Colonel Ki, “and we’ll need some of the local Puman as porters.”
“To Lang Son?”
“To the river,” Yu answered. “We will take them from there.”
“Perhaps,” Ki said, “you have misunderstood what ‘Lekang’ really means in Chinese.”
“It means Unruly Waters,” Nicholai answered.
“Unruly to say the least,” Ki commented with the expression of mild sympathy that one gives to an acquaintance who has just embarrassingly revealed that he is terminally ill. But there was money to be made. “For a nominal fee, I can provide boats.”
“I have already arranged for the boats.”
Ki inwardly cursed the rivermen who had sold their services without gaining his permission or giving him his cut, and worried how such a transaction could occur without his knowledge. “An escort, then? You are four days’ march from the river, and despite the party’s heroic efforts, there are still bandits in these mountains.”
“Bandits?”
“Bad people,” Ki said, shaking his head. “Very bad people.”
The porters shouldered the heavy crates on bamboo poles down the steep mountain trail, slippery with mud from the recent rains. The short legs and long trunks of these Puman tribesmen gave them an advantage that Nicholai did not possess as each step jarred his already sore knees and ankles. While the climb up from the last valley had been grueling, the descent down into the next was simply painful, and Nicholai thought that the route more than lived up to its sobriquet, “the Dragon’s Tail.”
They’d been on it for three days now, with another day yet to go before they reached the river and the boats.
The soldiers that Yu commandeered went out ahead and along the flanks. Some had Chinese “burp guns” slung over their shoulders, others carried captured American Mi rifles. At each pause in the day, and at their camps for the night, Yu gathered the soldiers and conducted study sessions on Marxist theory and Maoist thought.
Communism, Nicholai thought. It promises to make everyone equally rich and instead makes everyone equally poor.
During a break in the march one day, Nicholai took out a pack of cigarettes, shook out two, and offered one to Yu.
“French,” Yu observed. “They are very good, I think.”
“Take one,” Nicholai said. “You’re allowed the occasional bourgeois indulgence.”
A man needs a whiff of sin now and then, Nicholai thought, or he becomes something not quite a man. Yu took the proffered cigarette with an expression of delicious guilt. Nicholai lit it for him and Yu took a long drag. “It is very good. Thank you.”
“Not at all.”
Yu took two more short, disciplined puffs, carefully snuffed the cigarette out on the ground, put the butt in his shirt pocket, and buttoned it.
Nicholai thought of Solange, and missed her.
“Is there a girl at home?” he asked Yu.
“As a revolutionary,” Yu answered, “I have no time for bourgeois concepts such as romantic love.”
“So there is.”
Yu allowed himself a shy smile. “She is also a revolutionary. But perhaps someday, when the revolution has been established … You?”
“Yes. A French girl.”
“And you think about her.”
“Yes.”
After three years in prison, Nicholai thought he had come to terms with loneliness. Its return to his internal life was a mixed blessing. But, yes, he thought about Solange.
Too often and not often enough.
He took the next painful step down the mountain.
They stopped for the night at a Daoist monastery built on a small knoll along the side of the trail. The view was magnificent, the food somewhat less so, composed as it was of congee with small bits of vegetables and fish. But Nicholai ate ravenously and then stood on the periphery of a rectangular stone pavilion and watched the monks perform their kung-fu kata, which he recognized as the classic southern hung-gar form of “Tiger and Crane.”
Beautiful and doubtless deadly, he thought, although not as efficient as hoda korosu. But that was the main distinction between Chinese and Japanese martial arts — the former used many elaborate and circular moves while the latter emphasized one quick, direct, fatal strike.
Nicholai contemplated which was superior and decided that it was the Chinese for beauty, the Japanese for killing.
On the far side of the pavilion, Yu inflicted Communist doctrine on his students. One of the victims, a thick country lad named Liang, stared wistfully off into the bamboo thickets, doubtless wishing that he could find sanctuary there. But Liang was something of a special pet of Yu’s and so good-naturedly sat through the lecture as if genuinely interested. Yu had great, if misplaced, hopes for him.
One more day on the Dragon’s Tail, Nicholai thought. They would reach the river late the next afternoon and load their cargo onto the waiting boats. It would be a nice change to be on the water and off the arduous trail.
He walked back to the chamber that had been assigned to him. It was a small room with a single kang, the classic Chinese raised bed, which was draped with thin mosquito netting. Someone had already come in, lit a lantern, and left a thermos of hot water and an old porcelain cup with which to make tea.
But Nicholai craved rest more than the stimulation of the strong southern green tea, so he stripped off his clothes, climbed into the kang, and stretched out. He closed his eyes and told his mind to allow him five hours of sleep. He wanted to wake up well before dawn to make sure that the caravan got an early start.
Nicholai’s proximity sense woke him before his internal alarm did.
The two men smelled of cheap Chinese tobacco. Their heavy steps made clear that they were bandits and not professional assassins — they tried to walk quietly but were clumsy and obvious. Amateurs assume that to step slowly is to step softly, while professionals know that the opposite is true and are both quick and light.
Willing himself to remain still, Nicholai measured the slow heavy footsteps of the lead bandit as they creaked on the wooden floor. If they were going to use guns they would have done it already, but they apparently didn’t want to make noise and spring the main attack prematurely, before they had eliminated the leadership. So it would be a sword, a knife or an axe, maybe a garrote, but more likely an edged weapon that could slice through the mosquito netting, sparing the extra second to open it.
So there would be time for hoda korosu.
He edged his hand along the kang, felt for the teacup, and slid it beside him under the thin sheet. Silently he crushed the cup in his hand until he felt blood running from his palm, and then pinched the sharp shard of glass between his thumb and forefinger.
Then he waited.
The footsteps stopped and Nicholai felt the bandit pause as he lifted his arm to strike.
Nicholai swung the shard in a horizontal backhand that sliced the bandit’s throat. The knife arm came down in a limp, useless arc and then the bandit, his left arm futilely clutching his throat, pitched forward onto the kang.
The second bandit made the fatal error of backing up and reaching for the pistol at his belt as Nicholai launched off the kang, grabbed the heavy metal thermos, and swung it like a club. The man’s skull fractured with a sickening crack. Nicholai bent over h
is body, took the pistol, and stepped outside.
Red muzzle flashes tore the black silk fabric of the night.
Yu, clad only in trousers, stood with a pistol in his hand, trying to form the startled men into some kind of order.
Nicholai heard the zip-zip of gunfire and felt the little pockets of air concuss as the bullets flew past him. He had experienced bombings, beatings, and hand-to-hand combat, but this was his first firefight and he found it chaotic. The bandits had chosen a good time to strike, the hours of deepest sleep before dawn, and the fight had the surreal quality of a waking dream.
The bullets were real, however, and Nicholai heard the hollow thunk of a round strike the soldier beside him. The boy reached down to the hole in his stomach and looked at Nicholai with an expression of hurt surprise, as if to ask if this were really happening, then howled with pain. Nicholai eased him to the ground as gently as he could. The boy would die and there was nothing he could do.
He could only try to save the cargo.
Nicholai exchanged his pistol for the soldier’s rifle and moved out.
Yu was already rallying the men he had left toward the crates stacked in the monastery’s central pavilion. A few of the sentries guarding the crates had already fled, two others lay slumped dead at their posts, while three crouched behind the boxes and returned the shots that were coming from the bamboo thicket on the far side of the pavilion. But they were under heavy fire and it was obvious that they couldn’t hold out for long.
Yu started across the pavilion for the pile of crates but Nicholai held him back. It was brave but useless to join the three soldiers in their isolated post. We would just become additional targets, Nicholai thought, a few more sacrificed stones in a soon-to-be eliminated position on the board. Better to create a new position and give the bandits something new to think about.
So Nicholai squatted behind a stone bench set at the edge of the pavilion. He waited until he saw a muzzle flash come from the bamboo and fired at it, then heard a man scream in pain. Yu did the same with the same result.
The shooting from the bamboo stopped as the bandits considered how to handle the new situation.
