Don Winslow - Satori

Nicholai started to greet Liang, but saw that it was a different driver.

“Where is Liang?” Nicholai asked.

“Sick,” Chen said. The smell of fear came off him. A sheen of greasy sweat shone on his cheeks.

Nicholai took two cigarettes from his pack and offered one to Chen. The escort took it, but his hands shook as Nicholai held the lighter up to the cigarette. He steadied Chen’s wrist and said, “Perhaps it was catching.”

“Maybe.”

“You should go home and take care of yourself.” Nicholai looked into his eyes. “It’s all right.”

“I’m so sorry,” Chen answered, “that I was… late.”

“Truly, it doesn’t matter.” He let go of Chen’s wrist. Nicholai sat back in his seat, smoked, looked out the window, and pretended not to notice when the car turned not for Xuanwu, but toward the Bell and Drum Towers.

KANG READIED THE STAGE.

He wanted it perfect, a flawless setting for the drama that he was about to enact, the play that he had already written.

This Nicholai Hel person would speak his intended lines. Maybe not at first, when his masculine pride would force him to resist; but eventually he would give in and pronounce the words. He would come in as a man but leave as a eunuch, enter the stage as a sheng but exit as a dan, shamed and pleading to die.

But the dignity of a private death was not on the page for this Hel. Kang would save what was left of him for another performance, his humiliation played before an audience of thousands at the Bridge of Heaven. Hel would have a placard on his back instead of an embroidered robe, he would be bound with heavy ropes, and he would take a final bow to the bark of rifles and the roar of the crowd.

Kang fingered the exquisitely thin, stiff wire – sharpened at one end, looped at the other – with which he intended to skewer Hel’s masculinity.

“Drawing the Jinghu Bow Across the Strings” is what Kang had titled this new technique, and he could already imagine the notes that Hel would achieve as the wire was pushed and pulled back and forth through his testicles.

Kang had dressed for the occasion – a black jacket with black brocade over black silk pajamas and black slippers. He had slicked his hair back carefully, trimmed his eyebrows, and applied the most subtle, indistinguishable layer of rouge on his cheeks.

He looked forward to matching the rhythms of the mental torture along with the physical – show Hel the agony that was inevitable, then offer to rescind the sentence, and then apply it anyway. Draw the strings back and forth between despair and hope, terror and relief, anguish and cessation, building to a climax in which there was only pain.

As in any worthy opera, the music would be punctuated by passages of speech, as Hel recited his monologues. Yes, he was an American agent, yes he had been sent to pull the strings of the puppet, the traitor Liu, yes they conspired to deliver guns to antirevolutionary elements in Yunnan, yes, they hoped to murder Chairman Mao.

He heard car doors close, and then footsteps on the pebbled walkway.

The opera was about to begin.

THE LIGHTS IN THE HOUSE dimmed as the stage lamps came up.

Voroshenin, comfortable in his private box, leaned forward and looked down at the black square stage, traditionally placed to the north of the audience. He loved this old theater, with its red gilded columns framing the stage, its old wooden floor, the vendors milling around selling peanuts and steamy hot towels, the chatter, the laughter.

The chair beside him was empty.

Hel had not arrived.

Voroshenin knew that the foolish young man was attending an opera of his own, one in which he would unwillingly sing the lead role.

After a moment of anticipatory silence, the orchestra struck its first notes, and the audience hushed as Xun Huisheng stepped onto the stage. Dressed as a huadan – a saucy young woman – Xun wore a long scarlet Ming-era robe with flowers brocaded on the shoulders and wide “water” sleeves. He stood center stage and gave his shangching, the opening speech, identifying himself as the Red Maid.

Then, waving his hand with a grace born from decades of practice, he produced a scroll from the sleeve, paused, and began the famous first aria.

This letter is the evidence of the affair.

Commanded by my lady, I am on my way to the West Chamber.

In the early morning silence reigns supreme.

Let me, the Red Maid, have a little cough to warn him.

Voroshenin was delighted.

“GO PLAYER IS off the radar.”

Haverford felt his blood go cold and his stomach flip. “What?”

“He didn’t arrive at Point Zero.”

“Didn’t or hasn’t?” Haverford asked.

The young agent shrugged. A few seconds later he asked, “Do you want to give the scramble code?”

A scramble code would do just that – send the extraction team in the Niujie Mosque scrambling for cover before they could be rounded up, send the Monk, the Hui agents, all of them, running for the border.

He considered the possibilities:

The mundane – Hel was simply delayed, tied up in traffic.

The treacherous – Hel had chickened out and was running on his own.

The catastrophic-Hel was in Kang Sheng’s hands.

The last scenario would definitely trigger a scramble code.

“No,” Haverford said. “Let’s give it a while longer.”

Where are you, Nicholai?

THREE POLICE AGENTS hauled Nicholai from the car, pushed him over the hood, and handcuffed him behind his back.

He didn’t resist. This wasn’t the moment.

They straightened him back up, and an agent held him by either elbow.

“Spy!” Chen yelled at him, his eyes begging forgiveness. Flicks of spit hit Nicholai in the face as Chen screamed, “Now you will feel the people’s righteous fury! Now you will know the anger of the workers and peasants!

Chen turned to get back into the car, but the driver was out of the car, pulled a pistol, and held it at Chen’s head. “Li Ar Chen, I arrest you for treason against the People’s Republic.”

The third policeman grabbed his arms, twisted them behind him, and cuffed him.

“No!” Chen yelled. “Not me! Him! Not me! I did everything you said!”

The driver holstered his pistol, slapped him hard across the face, then ordered, “Take him.”

The policeman pushed Chen in front of Nicholai.

Without a word, they frog-marched him through a stone garden to what looked improbably like a cave. One of the cops knocked on the thick wooden door and a moment later Nicholai heard a muffled, “Come.”

The door opened and the agents pushed Nicholai inside.

It was indeed a cave, or at least an effort to replicate one in concrete. Communists, Nicholai thought, they do love their concrete. The ceilings were curved and the walls painted with streaks to imitate geological striations.

This “cave” was beautifully furnished with rosewood tables and chairs, a lounging sofa, and the machinery of torture. There was a bench of sorts, obviously used for beatings and perhaps sodomy, a staggering variety of whips and flails hung neatly from assigned hooks, and two straight-backed chairs, the seats of which had been removed, bolted to the floor.

The cops shoved Nicholai down onto one of the chairs, removed the cuffs, and used heavy leather straps to tightly fasten his wrists to the arms of the chair. Nicholai watched as they took Chen, roughly stripped off his clothes, and then hung him by the handcuffs from a steel rail that ran across the ceiling. Then they tied his ankles down to bolts in the floor, so that he was spread-eagled.