Satori (13 page)

35

D
IAMOND 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

“Y
OU ARE A
 …” Chen searched for the word in Chinese, then decided on French. “…  gourmet.”

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

N
ICHOLAI 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.”

“Only to be a congenial host.”

That settled, they ordered the buns, and, friends again, ate and discussed safely mundane topics such as the weather.

Then they got up and went to the bank.

Although they deeply resented these symbols of capitalism, the Communists nevertheless needed banks to conduct business, so several survived in Beijing, their staffs vaguely shamed and tinged with guilt by association.

“Which bank?” Chen asked when they got into the car.

“Banque de l’Indochine,” Nicholai answered.

“Of course.” Chen’s response was colored with mild irony. There were banks and there were banks — some kept a close eye on the transactions of their depositors, others were more famous for blinking. Banque de l’Indochine had a well-earned reputation for the latter, its censorial eyesight as stringently selective as that of Southeast Asia itself— cheerfully and self-consciously corrupt.

If a French arms dealer was going to conduct shady monetary business in Asia, Banque de l’Indochine was the place to do it.

Nicholai took a pack of cigarettes from his coat and offered one to Chen and the other to the driver, then lit all three.

“Xie xie
,” the driver said, the first words he had spoken to Nicholai.

It took only a few minutes to get to the bank. The driver waited in the car while Chen took Nicholai inside and asked to see the manager.

All bank managers are the same, Nicholai thought as the man emerged from his office, looking slightly startled at having been interrupted for business this close to opening time. This one quickly affected the standard attitude that any transaction with a depositor was an interruption.

Nicholai had intended to speak Chinese, but now he used French instead.

“Do you speak French, Comrade?”

“Yes, of course,” the manager said, jutting his chin toward the window, into which the French “Banque de l’Indochine” was etched.

Nicholai thought the manager looked a little uncomfortable in his Mao jacket. Certainly he would have preferred the standard charcoal gray suit that was uniform for bankers back in the good old days.

“I wish to make a wire transfer and I wish to make it privately,” Nicholai said, deliberately rude so that the banker would instantly understand the difference in their social status, behave obediently, and want him to conduct his business quickly and leave. He didn’t want the manager to check too many papers or perform too much due diligence.

“You have an account with us, I assume?”

“Yes, of course,” Nicholai said. He handed the manager his passbook, created by the CIA’s forgers.

The manager glanced at it. “And your passport?”

Nicholai gave him the passport, and the manager looked from the photo to Nicholai and then back again. “Very well, Mon — Comrade Guibert. Please come with me.”

When Chen started to come with them, the manager snapped, “Not you.”

Nicholai followed the manager down a hallway to a glassed cubicle that contained a desk and a single chair. He gestured for Nicholai to sit down and then said, “Please complete these forms.”

Nicholai sat and filled out the complex paperwork as the manager discreetly turned his back. He handed the papers over and the manager asked him to make himself comfortable and wait.

As he waited, Nicholai hoped that Haverford had indeed deposited the necessary funds. The Chinese were serious about business and wouldn’t tolerate a deadbeat. If the funds are not in the account, Nicholai thought, I will be swiftly shown the door and just as quickly given the bum’s rush out of the country.

That was the best scenario. The worst possibility would be that the paperwork would trigger an internal alert of some kind, that there had been a leak from CIA, and that it would be the Chinese police, not the cowed manager, who returned to the room.

The phone rang in Haverford’s room at the Peninsula Hotel in Hong Kong.

“Monsieur Cartier?” the voice asked, speaking French with a heavy Vietnamese accent.

“Yes?”

“A large transfer of funds request has just come through our Vientiane branch,” the speaker said, “and triggered an internal notice that you were to be notified.”

“Yes?”

“From a Monsieur Guibert?”

“Routed to what destination, please?”

The speaker rattled off an account number in Lausanne.

“That’s fine, yes.”

“Thank you. Good morning.”

“Good morning.”

Twenty long minutes later, the manager returned with the happy news that everything seemed to be in order, and escorted Nicholai to a different room where a wire operator sat behind a broad wooden table. The manager handed the operator the papers and told him to effect the transfer.

“The funds will be available at opening of business in Switzerland,” the manager said, nonverbally according Nicholai more respect. It had been a very large sum indeed.

“Thank you,” Nicholai said.

“Thank you for banking with us,” the manager replied. Then, needing to let Nicholai know that he was a busy man, he added, “If there is nothing else?”

“That will be all, thank you.”

Nicholai met the insulted Chen back in the lobby.

“Finished?” Chen asked brusquely.

“The man is an officious fool,” Nicholai said.

“It doesn’t matter.”

“I would like to see some of the sights now,” Nicholai said, “if you would be kind enough to escort me.”

“With pleasure.”

They got back in the car and headed for the Great Wall.