Don Winslow - Satori

The countess might very well have made herself vulnerable to charges of collaboration had she survived the war, but she died of natural causes.

But what of the son? Voroshenin wondered.

On the subject of Nicholai Hel, the files had nothing more to offer. The boy simply disappeared from the record, which was not unusual, Voroshenin reassured himself. In the chaos that was wartime Asia, hundreds of thousands of people simply disappeared.

Now, as Voroshenin sat in his office at the Russian Legation, he wished that he had ordered Ivanovna to be executed – or done it himself – before the bitch could spawn.

But is it possible?

Is it possible that this Guibert is Hel, come for his vengeance?

Just when I am on the verge of making my escape?

THEY TOURED ALL the major sights.

Tiananmen Square, the Temple of Heaven, the Forbidden City, the Bell and Drum Towers, and Beihai Park.

“Which you’ve already seen,” Chen remarked.

He was relieved when Nicholai suggested that they go to Xidan Market to sample the street vendors’ wares. It was bitterly cold now, in the gloaming dark of late afternoon, and they paused by the open braziers and trash-can fires to warm their feet and hands as they wandered through the hutongs of Xidan. During one such hiatus Nicholai finally learned that the driver’s name was Liang Qishao and that he was a Beijing native, as he treated both men to fried dough cakes, mugs of hot green tea, scorched sausages, roasted chestnuts, and bowls of sweet porridge.

Nicholai enjoyed the outing, a colder and somewhat tamer version of his youthful forays into the seedier parts of Shanghai, and the common food was as delicious as anything served in the finer restaurants.

Sated, he said to Chen, “Now I would like to go to church.”

“To church?”

“A Catholic church,” Nicholai clarified. “I am French, after all. Do any survive in Beijing?”

Liang nodded. “Dongjiaomin. ‘St. Michael’s.’ In the Legation Quarter.”

“Could you take me there?” Nicholai asked.

Liang looked to his boss.

Chen hesitated, then nodded.

“All right.”

The church was lovely.

Nicholai was not a devotee of religious architecture, but St. Michael’s had an undeniable charm, its twin Gothic spires rising above the otherwise low skyline. A statue of the Archangel Michael stood above the two arched doorways.

Chen had him dropped off on the east side of the building, off the main street, and neither he nor Liang accompanied him through the iron gate into the courtyard. Nicholai enjoyed the rare moment of privacy before going inside.

The interior was relatively dark, lit only by candlelight and the dim glow of a few low-wattage wall lamps behind sconces. But the fading afternoon sun lit the stained-glass windows with a subtle grace, and the atmosphere was quiet and peaceful.

As Solange had tutored him, Nicholai dipped his fingers in the small well of holy water and touched his forehead and shoulders, making the sign of the cross. He walked down to the altar, knelt in front of the votive candles, and said a prayer. Then he retreated to the pews and waited for someone to come out of the confessional booth.

She was a Chinese woman, her head covered in a black scarf, and she looked at Nicholai and hurried out, frightened. He waited for a moment, remembering the words Solange taught him, and then went in and knelt in the confessional and said in French, “Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned.”

He could barely make out the priest’s face through the screen in the darkened booth, but it looked Asian.

“What is your name, son?”

“Michel.”

“How long has it been since your last confession?”

Nicholai recalled the number called for. “Forty-eight days.”

“Go on.”

Nicholai confessed a precise list of “sins,” in precise order – lust, gluttony, dishonesty, and lust again – Haverford’s small joke. When he had finished, there was a short silence and the priest’s face was replaced with a piece of paper.

“Can you see?” the priest asked. He turned up the lamp a bit.

“Yes,” Nicholai said, studying the floor plan of the Zhengyici Opera House. A certain box was circled in red.

He memorized the plan – the doorways, stairs, the halls – then said, “I have it.”

The priest’s face came back into view. “Your sins are forgiven you. Ten Hail Marys, five Apostles’ Creeds, and an Act of Contrition. Try to curb your lust. God be with you, son.”

Nicholai left the confessional, returned to the altar, knelt, and said his prayers.

VOROSHENIN SAT and thought.

There was something about the name Kishikawa.

A few minutes later, he thought he recalled something and got on the phone. Half an hour later, he was on the line to Moscow, in touch with an old colleague, Colonel – now General – Gorbatov.

“Yuri, how are you?”

“In Beijing, if that answers the question.”

“Ah. To what do I owe -”

“Does the name Kishikawa mean anything to you?”

“I was the Soviet part of the joint Allied prosecution of Japanese war criminals outside of Tokyo back in ‘48,” Gorbatov answered. “Kishikawa was my biggest fish. Why do you ask?”

“Did you execute him?”

“We were going to,” Gorbatov said. “Didn’t get the chance.”

“Why not?”

“It was extraordinary, actually,” Gorbatov said. “Quite the story. There was this young man who worked as a translator for the Americans and was somehow a friend to Kishikawa. Actually he was the son of a Russian aristocrat… hold on… it’s coming to me… Ivanovna. A countess, no less.”

“Do you remember his name? The young man’s?”

“He was quite a memorable chap. Very self-possessed -”

“His name, Piotr?”

“Hel. Nicholai Hel.”

Voroshenin actually felt the hairs on the back of his neck rise. “What happened to the general?”

“That’s the extraordinary part,” Gorbatov answered. “Young Hel killed him. In his cell. Right in front of the guards, some sort of Japanese strike to the throat. Apparently he wanted to save him the shame of hanging.”

Voroshenin felt his own throat tighten. “Is this Hel in our custody?”

“No, the Americans took him. We were happy to see him go, believe me.”

“Do we know what happened to him?”

“I don’t,” Gorbatov said. “Glad to wash my hands of it. Very spooky, the whole thing, if you ask me. On which subject, why are you asking, Yuri?”

“A favor, Piotr?” Voroshenin asked. “Forget I called?”

He hung up the phone.

NICHOLAI PUSHED A CHAIR against the wall to create some space in his room, then he stripped down to his shorts and did twenty repetitions of the demanding hoda korosu “Caged Leopard” kata.

He selected this particular form because it stressed close-in fighting – precise strikes that demanded the buildup of force at short range. Starting with the entire room, he performed the kata in increasingly smaller circles, until by the end he barely moved his feet as he fought in the tightening bamboo cage of his imagination.

Although the form included brutal elbow and knee strikes, its principal feature was its unique “leopard paw” hand posture, the fingers bent at the second knuckle but not closed to make a complete fist. The striking surface was therefore thin, just the second knuckles, intended to penetrate a narrow space.

Precision was key.

That, and the concentration of force, and Nicholai practiced until he could generate explosive power in a strike that traveled just two inches before striking its target. He thought he might have as much as six inches to two feet in the actual situation, but didn’t want to allow himself the mental leisure of that luxury.