Don Winslow - Satori

Peering back into those green eyes, Voroshenin switched to French. “Just that I’m looking forward to the opera tomorrow night.”

“No more than I.”

“I hope you can still come.”

“Why wouldn’t I?”

Cymbals and gongs clashed as the voices rose to a climax.

The two men held their gaze.

HE KNOWS, Nicholai thought.

Chen droned on in his enthusiasm about the acrobatic troupe.

Voroshenin knows.

The car slowed to negotiate a patch of black ice.

He knows my real identity.

Or does he? Certainly, he suspects. Your mother was my whore, Nicholai. I rode her like a sled. Did I react? To the language, the name, the insult? Even for a second? If even for a fraction of a second, Voroshenin would have picked it up.

Assume the worst, he told himself. Assume that Voroshenin now thinks he knows that you are Nicholai Hel. What does that mean? It doesn’t necessarily mean that he knows you are here to assassinate him. It only means that he knows you are not who you claim to be.

Bad enough, but not necessarily fatal.

But why, Nicholai pondered, is Voroshenin keeping the appointment at the opera?

Because he doesn’t know. He only suspects, which is why he was probing, why he stretched a line of stones deep into my defense. A risky move, because he’s given so much of his thinking away. But Voroshenin is no fool, he must have thought it worth the risk. And was it?

Face it, you don’t know. He’s a chess player, not a Go player, Nicholai thought, cursing himself for not knowing more about the Western game. It was linear, though, he knew that, and geometrical – rich in forward, machinelike thinking, poor in subtlety and nuance. Voroshenin believes that he sacrificed a minor piece – a “pawn,” I believe – to expose a more important piece of mine, and now he invites my countermove.

I’m looking forward to the opera tomorrow night.

No more than I.

I hope you can still come.

Why wouldn’t I?

A lot of reasons, Nicholai thought, including the very real possibility that my purpose here has been discovered, “compromised,” in Haverford’s jargon.

By rights, he knew that he should use one of the dead drops to report this development to the American, but he also knew that he wouldn’t. Haverford might call the mission off – “abort” – and Nicholai didn’t want that.

He wanted to kill Yuri Voroshenin.

Fine, he thought, envisioning the Russian’s florid face as he delivered his adolescent insult.

You play your chess game, I will play Go.

We shall see who wins.

VOROSHENIN WAS furious.

Livid with himself.

Clumsy, ham-handed, and stupid, he thought as he pushed open the door of the Russian Legation. How could I have thought he would fall for such an elementary trick?

But was there a glimmer? Just a trace?

He walked up the stairs to his office and immediately went for the vodka bottle. It’s improbable, he told himself. Improbable, unlikely, and so anachronistic, the offended son coming to settle a score older than he is, to redeem his mother’s honor. No one kills for honor anymore, that died with the Romanovs.

And assuming that Guibert is Hel, he doesn’t necessarily know who I am, or that I had any relationship to his mother.

So, if Guibert is Hel, what the hell is he doing here?

In the guise of a French arms dealer.

His paranoia rising, Voroshenin pulled the shades on the window. He sat down, but soon found himself pacing back and forth in the room.

Assume he is Hel, he told himself.

What of it?

Why is he here?

To know that, you must first answer the question of who he’s working for. Well, you know that he was last in the control of the Americans. Did they simply turn him loose after a few years? He killed a Jap general whom they were going to hang anyway, so easy come, easy go?

Highly unlikely.

In the first place, the rigid Americans don’t possess that level of moral flexibility. In the second place, Hel couldn’t obtain a “cover” without professional help and backing. The Guibert cover – if that’s what it is – is both sophisticated and deep. Someone went to a lot of trouble and expense to place Guibert in Beijing, and no intelligence service of any government would do that so some young man with a grudge can pursue his romantic notion of revenge.

For what, then?

Voroshenin walked to the window, edged the bottom corner of the curtain open, and peeked out onto the street. It was empty, quiet, a gentle snow falling.

He let the curtain fall back.

Hel was in American control, but he appears now as a French national.

Is this a French operation? Doubtful – the French were still supine from the war, and more than had their hands full in Vietnam. They were not about to do anything that would bring China into that mess.

All right, so Hel was in American control, appears as a French national, albeit with a Chinese background. Is this a Nationalist operation? Is Hel on loan from the Americans to the Nats, and if so, for what purpose? It didn’t make sense – why would the Nats use a Westerner when they had thousands of disaffected Chinese available?

So that leaves the Americans, Voroshenin concluded.

Don’t dismiss the obvious just because it’s obvious.

Hel was in American control and still is. Quite a useful tool, really – familiar with China, speaks the language. Has Russian and French as well. Born to be a spy, when you think about it. You’d have recruited him yourself, and it’s a pity that Gorbatov didn’t when he had the chance.

So assume Hel is working for Washington.

What’s his task?

His cover as an arms dealer puts him in touch with the Ministry of Defense and he was hosted at dinner by -

Liu.

General Liu.

Mao’s chief and only rival.

Could the Americans be using Hel to make overtures to Liu? Or has he already accepted them? His smile genuine for the first time that night, at last Voroshenin saw the entire board, his next move, and its potential result.

I’m sorry, Alexandra, he thought, your son will have to die under exquisite torture, but that is the cost of allowing oneself to become a pawn in someone else’s game.

He looked at his watch.

It was only midnight.

Kang Sheng would still be up.

NICHOLAI SLIPPED OUT OF the hotel.

He simply took the elevator down to the basement, had a pleasant chat, and shared a few cigarettes with the men in the kitchen and then went out the delivery entrance at the back of the hotel.

Then he walked briskly into the Legation Quarter. The streets were almost empty now, this late at night, with most of the Beijingren securely tucked away inside their living units. Lights were on, of course, in the Russian Legation, and Nicholai stood across the street under an elm tree and watched the front door.

A car pulled up and waited, its tailpipe smoking in the cold.

Voroshenin, trailed by his faithful hounds, came out a few minutes later and got into the car, which quickly pulled out.

A nice piece of luck, Nicholai thought, for the move he contemplated was a terrible risk. But Otake-san had taught him that very often not taking a risk was more dangerous than taking one.

Cupping his hands against the bitter wind, he lit a cigarette, moved to a spot under the glow of a streetlight, and waited.

It took twenty long minutes for Vasili Leotov to work up enough nerve to come out. Chin tucked into his collar, hands jammed into his coat pockets, his head on a swivel looking nervously about, he crossed the street.

Nicholai walked slowly away, out of range of the listening devices that doubtless studded the Soviet building. He could hear Leotov’s footsteps crunch on the snow, following him. He shortened his step and slowed his gait, allowing the smaller man to catch up with him.