Ian Slater - Warshot

A Mr. Lo, a PLA guard behind him, turned up promptly, officiously flashing his ID from Harbin’s Public Security Bureau. He asked her, “Ni hui shuo Zhongwen ma?” Do you speak Chinese?

“Hui, yidian.” I can, a little. Her accent was not good.

“Ni hui shuo Yingwen ma?” Do you speak English? Mr. Lo asked.

“Shide,” she replied, and completely disarmed him by asking, “Why can’t China think for herself? Why do you import foreigners to revere?” Not once, she pointed out, had she seen even a small park named after Mao. Mr. Lo, scrambling for an answer, explained that unlike the “running dog revisionists” of eastern Europe who had “betrayed” Marxism, China had remained loyal. As for her insult that China could not think for itself, he said China had always thought for herself. Mr. Lo explained that the Great Helmsman had expressly forbidden personality cults and the deification of any particular leader. This is why she had seen no Mao parks or statues.

“Did the Great Helmsman tell the Central Committee,” Alexsandra asked, remaining seated calmly on the wooden stool, looking up at him, “to let Novosibirsk push you around? To send troops at their bidding?”

Mr. Lo struck her once, knocking her off the stool. His voice, if anything, was quieter than before. “You are a stupid woman. We do this as a protection against the American imperialists.”

“The Americans won’t invade China,” Alexsandra shot back contemptuously. She had learned enough from her previous interrogations to know that weakness only made them recognize their bullying for what it was, and in their guilt they lashed out — often more viciously than if you stood up to them. The guard hauled her roughly to her feet, putting her back on the stool.

“Ha!” said Lo. “Insolent! You are a stupid woman. You should have babies and concern yourself with wifely duties.”

“One child per family, comrade!” retorted Alexsandra, but Mr. Lo was long experienced, too, in interrogation, and he suspected that her initial defiance was only gongfen —a centimeter — thin. The file he had been sent from her Lake Baikal interrogation had revealed the same pattern: a brazen attempt to tough out the questioning right from the start.

Very well, Mr. Lo thought. He did not have time to mess around with stupid foreigners. The Public Security Bureau had instructed him to find out who were her “cohorts” in Harbin.

She told him there were none. She had come all this way on her own.

Mr. Lo spoke to the guard, who answered respectfully and immediately left the cell, only to return a minute later with another guard, the second man carrying a wooden chair, to which they tied her and proceeded to beat her legs about the shins with split bamboo cane. She did all she could to withstand the pain but soon was biting her lip, tears running, whimpering like a whipped puppy.

“Who are your cohorts?” asked Mr. Lo quietly.

Alexsandra didn’t answer.

“You are a bad woman!”

She said nothing.

“If you do not tell me in five minutes, I will turn you over to Black Berets. You understand?”

She understood it would be much longer than five minutes — any earlier and he’d lose face.

“You are a spy,” said Mr. Lo. “Who are your cohorts?”

She could hear the slow drip of water from the wall nearest the river, the cell so dark she could only make out a bead of sweat on Mr. Lo’s face and the dull sheen of the guard’s bayonet. Mr. Lo shook his finger at her. “We will put snakes in you. Do you wish this? Yes?”

She told herself there were no snakes in Harbin — the idiot man. It was too cold, but unconsciously she pressed her thighs together. It was a mistake. Lo now knew the long nose was more afraid than she made out. He whispered to the guard, who nodded, quickly tied her hands behind her, and left the room.

Apart from the few guests from the Plaza who had dared brave the cold, briskly crossing from the luxurious comfort of the hotel to the chestnut barrow by the southeast entrance to the park, a jogger was the vendor’s only customer.

“What can I tell ya!” complained the vendor. “I had ‘em poifect, then bam, bam, bam. Everyone comes for lunch— all in a bunch — so now ya gotta wait.”

“They look done enough,” said the jogger, a tall, gangly man clad head to toe in a gray tracksuit, his goatee beard crusted with snow, his hood laced tightly. In front and back of the gray jacket, in Day-Glo tape, there was a sign announcing to the world: I DON’T CARRY CASH, CREDIT CARDS, OR WRISTWATCHES!

He kept jogging in place.

“You want them?” said the vendor, stirring the chestnuts perfunctorily with his scoop. “You can have ‘em. But they ain’t cooked. Please yourself. ‘S only five minutes they’ll be done. What’s your hurry?”

The gray man slid a hand inside the tracksuit’s midriff pocket, peeking at a stopwatch attached to the pocket with a safety pin. “Got an appointment in five minutes.”

The vendor pointed the scoop at the man’s midriff. “Thought you had no valuables?”

The gray man shrugged. “Worth a try.”

“Hey! Hey! Hey!” yelled the vendor, a limo passing fast by the curb, throwing up an icy wave of slush. “You sonofabitch!” Sticking his head under the barrow’s meager awning, he turned to the gray man. “Big shot! Jay La Roche. Thinks he owns this fuckin’ town.”

“Probably does,” said the tall man, still jogging on the spot.

“How you gonna pay me if you don’t have no cash?”

The jogger bent down and extracted a five from his right sneaker. “Emergency funds.” He winked.

“Yeah. Right,” said the vendor, his grin thin with cynicism. “Some of those boys cut you up good, you hold out on ‘em.” He scooped up the chestnuts into one of the white bags and handed it to the man. “Four bucks.”

The runner kept jogging in place while the vendor’s hands did a number in his apron, frowning and mumbling something about not having change.

The jogger kept marking time until the vendor grunted and gave him four quarters before throwing on another fistful of chestnuts.

It was a dead drop — a note in the bottom of the paper bag with instructions for the next meet. Daytime meets were normally eschewed, but with the First Directorate under pressure from Yesov, Kirov had decreed that Operation Ballet should go ahead as fast as possible. The splash by Jay La Roche, or whoever it was in the limo, had nothing to do with it, but the vendor’s reaction made it more convincing if the FBI or CIA had been watching, which the jogger doubted. The Americans hadn’t yet broken a single three-man cell in the poisoned water crisis — PCBs dumped in New York’s water supply earlier in the war. True, a member of one cell in Queens who had kicked off the sabotage at the Con Ed’s Indian Point Nuclear Plant had reported to the jogger, his control, that he suspected he was being followed, but Control told him to relax — everybody in the plant who’d been on the shift and had clocked off twenty minutes before the bomb had exploded in the monitor room was being followed. Routine. Hell, since the water crisis, thousands of people were being followed.

Besides, Con Ed was turning out to be the cells’ best friend, their PR busy talking down the sabotage as a “nut case,” scared shitless that any sign of vulnerability at the Indian Point plant would start off fears of a meltdown, not only at Con Ed, but every friggin’ nuclear plant in the country. The FBI, CIA, and White House were going along with the “nut case” story, too. The water supply poisoning had been cleaned up — many of the toxins leached out, water quality measurements taken constantly instead of once a day — and so now everyone was reassured on that score. But if radiation got loose, that’d be another story. The Americans were on the verge of panic — security was now so tight at nuclear plants, hell, they wouldn’t let the president in without thumbprint ID for fear it might be a double.